New Writings in SF 18 (1970) (Gorgon776)

NEW WRITINGS IN SF-18 EDITED BY JOHN CARNELL

NEW WRITINGS IN SF-18

Edited by John Carnell

SOME DREAMS COME IN PACKAGES tells
of a future where it is not always easy to
tell the real people from the ... other
people . . .

In THE CYCLOPS PATROL, a new and quite
ingenious form of industrial espionage is
devised, while FRONTIER INCIDENT by
Robert Wells is a macabre tale of a man’s
mind being used for alien purposes.

Three stories, one by Grahame Leman, one
by Donald Malcolm, the other by Lee
Harding, deal with the individual fighting to
remain an individual — in a totalitarian world.
And for those who have been following, in
previous volumes of NEW WRITINGS IN SF,
the medical history of the planet Drambon,
James White’s MAJOR OPERATION is the
final episode of the staff of Sector General
Hospital — diagnosing, treating, and curing a
patient over 50,000 miles in diameter . . .

Also edited by John Carneu.

NEW WRITINGS IN SF-i
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NEW WRITINGS IN SF-7
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NEW WRITINGS IN SF-13
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NEW writings in SF-is
NEW WRITINGS IN SF-16
NEW WRITINGS IN SF-17

and published by Corgi Books

John Camell

New Writings in SF— 18

GORGliiili]^

TRANSWORLD PUBLISHERS LTD

A National General Company

NEW WRITINGS IN SF is a series especially edited by
John Carnell for the publishers. Corgi Books. A hardcover
edition is available from Dobson Books Ltd.

NEW WRITINGS IN SF-18

A CORGI BOOK o 552 8645 2

Originally published in Great Britain by
Dobson Books Ltd.

Printing History

Dobson Books Edition published 1971 ■

Corgi Edition published 1971

Copyright © 1970 by John Carnell

Condition of sale — this book is sold subject to the
condition that it shall not, by way of trade or otherwise,
be lent, re-sold, hired out or otherwise circulated
without the publisher’s prior consent in any form of
binding or cover other than that in which it is published
and without a similar condition including this condition
being imposed on the subsequent purchaser.

This book is set in Pilgrim 10/12 pt.

Corgi Books are published by Transworid Publishers, Ltd.,
Cavendish House, 57-59 Uxbridge Road, Eaiing,

London, W.5

Made and printed in Great Britain by

Richard Qay (The Chaucer Press), Ltd., Bungay, Suffolk

CONTENTS

Foreword by John Cornell page 7

Mistress Of The Mind by Lee Harding 9

Frontier Incident by Robert Wells 33

The Big Day by Donald Malcolm 33

Major Operation by James White 69

The Cyclops Patrol by William Spencer \Tj

Some Dreams Come in Packages by David Kyle 147

Django Maverick : 2051 by Grahame Leman 171

FOREWORD

by

John Carnell

In recent correspondence, Australian writer Lee Harding
pointed out that many volumes of New Writings In S-F have
contained stories concerning sociological trends and he felt
that this was a particularly rich vein for science-fiction
authors to explore, whether the locales concern today’s
world or are extrapolations into the future. True on both
counts but the sociological story has been with us for a long
time — at least a century and a half (and I will quote here.
Lord Charles Moresby’s A Hundred Years Hence, published
in 1828, 'concerning the advanced world of the twentieth
century’). For, naturally, we are all interested in the world
of the future, especially that thin slice we are going to live
in for our lifetime — and what we do about that immediate
future is always rooted in what we do today.

Despite the decimation of humanity by natural disasters,
war, starvation, the automobile, disease, and even .old age,
world population continues to expand, although there are
signs that in the western hemisphere at least the rate has
been dropping slightly. Like the wages-production-prices
spiral, the humanity spiral gets caught in its own vortex —
it uses up everything at an increasingly faster rate, creating
more and more shortages, greater waste, higher pollution,
and limitless social problems. For millennia. Nature herself
controlled the ecological balance of this planet, a long slow
period of adjustment and gestation; then, in one short cen-
tiuy, since Man himself has taken charge, technology has
continued to push back Nature’s barriers and we seem to be

7

getting deeper and deeper into the morass of unbalanced
forces.

Against this immense background we can list dozens of
subdivisions within which the science-fiction writer can pro-
ject his thoughts — ^water shortage, over-production, noise,
mechanisation, computerisation, city complexes, sewage,
raw materials, oil, and Nature’s last great stronghold the
sea. Nobody yet knows whether we have passed the point of
no return in the despoliation of our planet but at least the
warning signs have been long and loud.

If you look for them, one sociological trend or another
will turn up in every science-fiction story. It is a form of
literature which lends itself admirably to pointing out our
own shortcomings and stupidity, but it also makes sensible
suggestions as to how we may well circumvent some of the
problems we are apt to bring upon ourselves.

June 1970

John Carnell

MISTRESS OF THE MIND
by

Lee Harding

As the world of the flesh becomes more access-
ible and prosaic — taking the agonies of our
presentday so-called permissive society as a
criterion — so the spiritual needs of people
like Arthur Talbot will become more obses-
sive.

MISTRESS OF THE MIND

Arthur Talbot followed the old south-eastern freeway as
far as the abandoned Springvale overpass before he resumed
manual control. The car slowed down almost to a standstill
while he made the changeover, shuddered gracelessly as he
spun the wheel to the left and applied cautious pressure to
the accelerator, then purred quietly down a narrow access
ramp towards a residential wasteland.

He was relieved to have the dismally flood-lit concrete of
the deserted freeway behind him and to be moving away in
a direction where the unblinking eyes of the traffic moni-
tors were not programmed to follow. He tried to relax and
enjoy the luxurious anonymity of the suburban night, but
his nervous manner would have given him away to any
curious onlooker. He sat a little too stiffly at the wheel; his
narrow, peevish face looked straight ahead, and his dark
eyes were unnaturally bright because of some inner tension.
His fingers tapped and fidgeted with the steering wheel and
his foot felt stiff and awkward poised over the accelerator.

He drove slowly, determined not to attract any attention
from prowling police cars, guiding his sleek little business
vehicle carefully through the narrow, crumbling streets.
Only the ugly illumination provided by some left-over
fluorescents from another generation gave any indication of
the sort of neighbourhood he was moving through and he
had dimmed his headlights to such a degree that he could
barely see where he was going.

But he had been this way many times before and, at the

II

modest pace he was travelling, finding his way presented no
difficulty. He had no desire to see any more of this part of
the world than he already could. This had been a depressed
area for as long as he could remember; dozens of square
miles of factories and shops and offices had been allowed to
fall into disrepair through conscious neglect — several thou-
sand homes and apartment blocks had been abandoned and
the area itself made redundant. This was a measure of the
times and a toppling birthrate.

The car inched slowly forward. The gutted shapes of
factories crowded against him. Now there was only suffi-
cient space on the narrow street for two cars to pass abreast
— not that there was any likelihood of that ever happening.
Only the poor and morally dispossessed people of this
affluent society roamed rootless through these deserted
slums and they kept well clear of encroaching vehicles —
particularly those that came creeping in so late at night.

The police were supposed to patrol these areas regularly
— not because crimes of violence were an especial province
of these lonely wastes, but because they were obliged, like
most other segments of a largely redundant society, to go
through the motions of employment, in much the same
manner as the often simple-minded citizens they were
forced, by the very nature of their boredom, to apprehend
occasionally.

And Arthur Talbot had a lot to lose if they ever caught
him. Not that he cared much about what Laura would
think if he was ever arrested — his wife and her opinions
had ceased to mean anything to him some time ago — but he
did fear the outcome if he were caught. Firstly, he could
only expect some ignominious future as an unwilling in-
mate of some poorly run institution for unwanted deviates;
secondly, he feared the beating he could expect to receive
from the eager hands of whatever bored and jaded patrol
happened to accost him.

12

‘What d’yer think yer doin’,, skulkin’ through these ’ere
streets at this time er night, eh? What yer lookin’ tor?
What d’yer expect ter find ’ere that yer can’t find outside?
Bloody pale skin an’ quiverin’ ’ands an’ all — look at ’is eyes.
Bill. Damned pervert. I’ll be bound. What you need, little
man, is ter be taught a lesson — a bloody good lesson, too.
Teach yer ter go skulkin’ around th^s neck er the woods at
this time er night . . .’

Arthur Talbot flinched away from the impact of imagi-
nary blows. He hated the police, but sometimes he envied
them. At least they were allowed a ready-made outlet for
their frustration and aggression, something another age had
called the Privilege of Office.

His mouth was dry and he felt a little bit afraid. But so
far he had been careful and he had been lucky. If he was
pulled up at any time then he had decided that the best
thing he could do would be to act dumb and mumble some-
thing about getting lost. If he managed his story well
enough then he might get off with a bit of a beating and a
warning to get the hell out of the suburbs and not come
there again. But if they ever caught him actually entering
or leaving the House ...

Only the rewards involved made the enormous risk
worth while. For the first time in his long and useless life
Arthur Talbot had discovered something worth risking his
future for, and this precious knowledge gave him a moral
strength he had never previously possessed.

But at the moment he felt desolate and neglected. He
needed warmth and understanding and a haven well away
from the rigours of an inconsiderate world.

He parked his car several blocks away from his destina-
tion. This was one of the House rules; they were very care-
ful to ensure that their customers should approach them
discreetly, and on foot, through the many devious routes at
their disposal. An open approach was unthinkable.

13

He liked this part least of all, because it exposed him to
the grimy and polluted air that crawled through the empty
streets. It was unpleasant after the air-conditioned comfort
of his car, and there was something unsettlingly menacing
in the way the crumbling walls of the deserted factories
seemed to loom over him, like broken teeth in a dark, gap-
ing mouth that might at any moment reach out and engulf
him.

His destination was a building safely hidden from any of
the main thoroughfares. It could be found only by making
a circuitous route down several narrow streets and alleys
leading into ever deepening refuse. At some time in the
dim past it had housed a number of monstrous machines
which had whirred and hummed and produced a torrent of
useless merchandise; but these had long since been ripped
from their mountings and ground up into scrap metal. The
new — and unlawful — ^proprietors had installed their own
special devices, but these performed their duties quietly and
in an area of the mind where the watchdogs of the law
could not hear.

The windows of the House had all been blacked out; only
a faint glow crept out through some scratches and chinks in
the decrepit facade. To gain entrance Talbot hurried down
a long lane that ran down one side of the building. It was
barely wide enough for two people to manoeuvre past each
other and it stank. The other end opened out on to the
gigantic effluent treatment plant where a goodly propor-
tion of the distant city’s waste products were broken down
and processed into a thick brown soup and dispersed
through wide tunnels into the nearby ocean. The factory
itself was ancient and its original sealing had long since
deteriorated, so that the compound odour of decaying gar-
bage and human excrement drifted towards Talbot, the
narrow lane acting as a foul sort of amplifier. He breathed
shallowly and hurried along to the gap in the high metal

14

fence that allowed him entry into the House grounds.

It was quieter than a graveyard. Talbot stumbled over
the mounds of wind-borne refuse that cluttered the ground
between the fence and the long, squat building that was the
object of all his striving. He stood and faced a heavy
wooden door; the paint had chipped away and exposed the
original surface. Rain and wind had weathered this until it
had acquired an interesting patina of age and corruption. It
was heavily locked and barred from inside.

Talbot raised one nervous hand and knocked — discreetly
— four solemn times on the ancient wooden surface. He
waited for perhaps several minutes in the cold moonlight
while his call was registered and he heard the multiple
locks being withdrawn on the other side.

The door swung open a few cautious inches and spilled a
soft, bluish light into the darkness. An old face, weighed
down with a mixture of boredom and wisdom, peered out
at Talbot.

‘Good evening. Mister Swenson.’

The old face lit up in recognition. The door swung open
wide enough to allow him entry.

‘Why, if it isn’t Mister Talbot ! Do come in . . .’

He stepped quickly inside and paused a moment to
re-orientate himself in the narrow, dim-lit passageway. The
walls, too, were cracked and peeling, but nobody seemed to
think it worth while to repair these ravages. The other end
of the passage was covered with some heavy velvet drapes
that allowed through only a faint ghost of the quiet hum of
conversation apparent on the other side.

He turned around and watched Swenson reactivate the
numerous locks on the inside of the door. When he had
finished he straightened up and smiled, and rubbed the
palms of his hands against his thighs. ‘Nice to see you again,
sir.’

He was shorter than Talbot and slightly stooped, but

15

what he lacked in height was more than compensated by
the air of personal authority which was his natural quality.
‘And will it be the usual, then?’ he asked in a casual, busi-
ness-like tone.

Talbot nodded. And reached for his wallet. He withdrew
several notes and handed them to the old man. ‘Will this be
all right?’

Swenson accepted the money and counted it assiduously.
He looked up at his client a trifle apologetically. ‘Ah, I’m
afraid that the er, operating expenses have gone up a little
since last week. Mister Talbot. Extra charges from the top
and all that. I trust you understand that?’

‘Yes. Yes of course. How much?’ Talbot was not im-
patient. He was accustomed to this sort of bargaining and
conscious of the enormous difficulties Swenson and his
associates had to deal with. If the police closed one House
then another had quickly to make up for the loss in
revenue. This was a simple fact of business — any business.

‘Another fifteen will make it right,’ the old man said.
‘And tonight the drinks are on the House.’

Talbot gave a wry grin. ‘That’s very kind of you,’ he said.
But the liquor here was always foul and this was no
gratuity. And besides — he hadn’t come here to indulge in
what he could easily find elsewhere.

Swenson gestured towards the velvet curtains. ‘Now, if
you’ll just step into the waiting room for a few minutes. I’ll
see that Madam takes care of you . . .’

The waiting room was crowded and shrouded in deep,
motionless rafts of cigarette smoke and filled with a word-
less longing that was almost tangible.

The lighting was dim, the walls covered with a sombre
and intricate paper pattern. A dozen or more men lounged
around on ancient, poorly upholstered furniture and
brooded quietly to themselves. Their eyes were dull and

i6

their movements lethargic; not many of them gave any
evidence of an internal nervousness similar to Talbot's. But
then perhaps their joys were less and their anticipation
without lustre. He felt sorry for them, but he knew that
sometime within the next few hours they would all have
the opportunity to embrace — momentarily — the object of
all their dreams and desires.

Talbot sat down in a high-backed cane armchair. One of
several young women came across to him and asked him if
he required a drink. He dismissed her off-handedly; host-
esses as such held no interest for him. But some of the
other men thought differently and they allowed the solemn
young ladies to administer to their more simple needs; they
smoked cigarettes that were brought to them and drank
copious quantities of the crude, local alcohol. In several
murky corners Talbot could discern one or two of the men
engaged in conversation with some of the hostesses; occa-
sional snatches of subdued laughter drifted across to him,
but it seemed to him a forced and unnaturally gay amuse-
ment.

He did not mind the waiting. Privation heightened
pleasure. But it was with a sense of enormous relief that he
felt the considerate weight of the Madam’s hand on his
shoulder sometime later.

‘All right, Mister Talbot : you can go in now.’

Her face was gaunt and painted but underneath he sensed
she was an imposing and morally dedicated person. Her
face was just the acknowledged mask of her profession.

She led him out of the room and down another passage-
way. This one was much longer than the first and it was
punctuated at regular intervals by decrepit doors and dang-
ling light fixtures that delivered only a feeble dust-laden
glow.

Each door was numbered. His was seventeen.

‘In here.’ The Madam gestured him inside.

17

Talbot felt a warm glow of affection pass over him as he
stepped into the narrow room. It was small, but not
cramped. There was a couch set against one wall to his left
with a small table and glasses beside it; there were always
two.

He smiled and sat down on the edge of the couch and
gazed affectionately at the opposite wall; it was mostly
covered by Rekina’s squat bulk. Like most bootleg cybers
she looked older than she was; she had probably been
knocked about quite a bit moving from one House to
another in the normal course of events and Talbot some-
times doubted that she had always been as well cared for as
she should have been. A thick film of dust clouded the dials
on her fascia and dulled her once bright grey carapace. Her
corners were chipped and dented and the lacquer had flaked
away and exposed the bare metal underneath. Her chro-
mium trim was lustreless, but Talbot loved her just the
same.

‘Make yourself comfortable,’ Madam requested.

Talbot stripped off his jacket and shirt and stretched out
on the couch. His face was blissful and unworried. Madam
taped the sensory wires to his chest and arms and fitted the
delicate cage of wires around his skull.

She sprayed an injection into his arm and stood up.
‘Now, if you’ll relax for a moment, Mister Talbot, I’ll run
the usual tests ’

Talbot smiled and closed his eyes. Already he could feel
the buffering drug taking effect, ironing out the residual
tensions inside him and preparing his mind and body for
the forthcoming rapport with the cyber.

His mind tingled as the Madam adjusted the controls.
Something soft and warm and deliciously feminine reached
out for him. He sensed her affectionate fingers invade his
thoughts and eagerly allowed his identity to merge and
commingle with hers.

i8

Hellow, Arthur.

Hellow, Rekina.

You haven’t seen me for so long . . .

I . . . I’ve been away. Business. You understand.

Of course. She always did. I missed you, Arthur.

Did you really? His heart fluttered.

Of course. Don’t I always? You’re so different from the
others.

He did not smile. This admission had been no gratuity.
Unlike her human counterparts Rekina was incapable of
deceit; every confidence she slipped into his willing mind
was honest and generous : she had not been programmed
otherwise.

Your mind is somehow more devoted, she went on. strok-
ing his tangled thoughts with her invisible hands.

Is it?

Of course, my darling.

Then I’m glad. 1 really do love you. Rekina.

Of course you do.

He smiled, like a child half-way into sleep, and for the
first time in several long weeks he began to relax. Safe in
the arms of his mistress he found that desolation and neg-
lect were momentarily negated.

There. How does that feel?’

Reluctantly, Talbot opened his eyes and looked up at the
critical face of the Madam. ‘Perfect,’ he mumbled. ‘Every-
thing’s perfect.’

She bent down and passed a heavy hand across his eyes
and they quickly closed. ‘Good. Well, don’t forget to call
me if you need anything . . .’ There was a buzzer close to his
right hand but he never used it.

She moved quietly out of the room and closed the door
behind her. Talbot had barely heard her last words. He was
by now so securely locked in rapport with the sympathetic

19

cyber that the outside world had, for the time being, ceased
to have any currency.

Her name stood for Rand Electronic Katharthis Inter-
preter and Need Analyser, but to Talbot — from that first
evening, more than a year ago, when he had first ‘met’ her
— ^she had always been Rekina : the feminine angel of his
dreams, the first person who had ever understood him.

She had been programmed to understand him.

You see, he had explained, my wife doesn’t understand
me; never has

And she had smiled, and stroked his feverish thoughts.
But what wife can? A wife is not a lover, can never be a
partner of the soul — and only lovers understand.

Is that really true? Is that all there is need to know? Can
1, with this information, manage to face this dolorous
world and . . .?

Even then there had been an infectious gaiety about her
mind which had helped to soothe away the ragged edges of
his gloom. But of course! Once you understand how essen-
tial . . .

But is it enough ? he wanted to know.

For someone like you it is everything.

And what am 1?

Her answer was ready. Inside her dull steel hull a tape
whirred and spun across her inputs while she extracted all
the relevant psychological data of his person and fashioned
her answer accordingly. You are Arthur William Talbot.
You are forty-one years old, disenchanted with the world
and filled with despair. . . .

The world is a nightmare, Arthur had countered, defen-
sively, a tawdry merry-go-round stuffed with grinning gar-
goyles and mindless spectators. The motor has run down
and propels us in jumps and shudders. And either the driver
has left us or he watches us from the gibbering shadows
with his mad, exclaiming eyes

20

But Rekina pressed on and disregarded his contemptuous
outburst. You are inclined to blame yourself lor what has
happened between your wife and yourself, but I am bound
to disagree. I see you as a child of chaos who has never been
understood. But I will understand you, Arthur. That is my
duty and my oath, my reason to be with you, for now and
whenever you wish. I will help you. I will make you whole
as you have never been before. Come to me and I will
assuage your pain and your loneliness. . . .

And, humbly, he had submitted to her. And so it was.
Because she had the means of monitoring the anxieties that
flooded through his bloodstream and access to the many
poisoned thoughts that eroded his confidence.

In this affluently permissive society it wasn’t flesh that
Arthur Talbot craved. The world had turned itself upside
down and, when everything was available and everything
was possible, merely physical extension only led to satia-
tion and moral emptiness. As the world of the flesh became
more accessible and prosaic, the spiritual needs of people
like Arthur Talbot became obsessive — and like so many of
his doomed compatriots Arthur had sentenced himself
years ago to a witless marriage.

Everybody knew about the Houses where the intangibles
might be obtained; they whispered and joked about them,
but nobody ever took such talk seriously — until the loneli-
ness and the desolation began to squeeze out of the pores of
their skin like part of their souls draining away into the
thoughtless music of time; only then did the desire to dis-
cover a different sort of companionship become an obses-
sion. Firstly, the casual, half-amused inquiry; the elusive
quarry tracked down inside of office hours and the tom slip
of paper passing nervously from another’s hands into his :
an address scribbled thereon and a grim warning to be cau-
tious.

21

Be discreet, his confidant had warned. If the fuzz catch
you . . .

And at first he had been much too afraid to consider
looking for the place. But as time passed — and the dull,
grey ennui of his life with Laura in their cramped, childless
apartment became unbearable, he was forced to flee her
witless company for something better; he felt compelled to
push his fears to one side and seek out a little satisfaction
from what was left of his vague and empty life. And on
that night — now more than a year ago — he had found his
journey’s end.

So long? Rekina mused.

So long, Arthur said. However did I manage to survive
before I found you?

Initially he had been apprehensive. The decrepit and
crumbling ex-factory buried deep in the heart of the de-
pressed area had worried his sensibilities. But the people
inside seemed to know what they were about and, after a
while, he began to look forward to his nocturnal assigna-
tions — after all, an assignation such as this should, at all
times, suggest a degree of danger to make the risk worth
while.

On that first evening he had been interviewed tactfully
by Swenson and then left alone in a small cubicle while he
poured out his heart to a portable recorder. He knew —
dimly — that everyhing he said would be coded and fed into
whatever machine was assigned to take care of him and he
found it easier to talk to a little grey box than to a person.

Therapy machines were marvellous inventions. They
were the delight of the many mental clinics that sprouted
like diseased mushrooms from the sterile soil of society, a
means whereby previously incurable neurotics could be
treated and coached back to an acceptable norm of be-
haviour and found suitable for society again. Because of
their inherent dangers if their bio-neural therapy was tam-

22

pered with, they were kept jealously guarded from the
general public.

But this was an open society and, in an age where small
atomic weapons could — and had — been stolen and thrown
together for -the use of criminals and gangsters and any-
thing, anywhere, could be had for a price, well, it wasn’t
surprising that the highly efficient crime syndicates had
found ways and means of obtaining some of the machines
once they had realised their potential.

But Arthur Talbot had only a hazy idea of the enormous
organisation of which this House was only one small cell of
vice; it was a vague, anamorphic entity very far in the
background where he was not obliged to think about it. The
cost of his evenings was high, but not prohibitively so and,
while they lasted, he was determined to enjoy them to the
full. In this way he found the determination to endure the
dreadful monotony of all his other dreary days and nights
away from Rekina.

On that very first evening he had been shy and nervous.

Don’t be, she had said. / will take care of you. You will
have nothing to fear while you are here with me. 1 will see
that you are not disturbed and that all your worries are
washed away and that alt the colourless trivia of your life
is denied entry. And we will discuss the things you love and
that which has given shape and meaning to your exis-
tence . . .

Nothing has ever done that, he protested.

But it must have, otherwise you would not have endured
and would not be here with me, now. We will probe
through your doubts and find these wondrous things and
you will learn to distinguish them with a fresh mind un-
clouded with trivia . . .

But is this possible?

Of course it is possible. 1 am your companion and I will
guide you, for 1 care.

23

She had been programmed to care. She knew everything
about him : all that he had spoken into the hungry recorder
and much more besides. This was the age of the dossier and
any man’s weakness could be had anywhere, anytime, for a
price — and with its customers the House was provided
with such necessary information almost instantaneously;
such was the polished efficiency of the controlling syndi-
cate.

So she knew all that he knew about himself and more.
Close to her metal heart were a number of tapes where all
this vital information rested and she drew upon it for every
nano-second of their time together.

His first reaction to the bio-neural rapport had been one
of overwhelming awe. For the first time in all his lonely
and misunderstood clerk’s life he knew that he was in
physical and mental contact with someone who understood
him. It was a blinding experience and he clung to it like a
drowning man while the past whirled madly around him
like a monstrous typhoon.

What is your name? he asked.

Whatever you wish it to be.

Hungrily, his thoughts wandered. He had already pic-
tured her in his astonished mind; indeed, she had seemed to
launch herself into his mind whole and astonishingly
beautiful from the very beginning. Her shape was as he had
always imagined her to be : tall and slender, with lustrous
long dark hair and a face filled with compassion and a love
that could defy the centuries. Her manner was gentle and
consoling; the warmth of hfer arms a blessing be was always
loath to leave. She was everything he had ever dreamed
about and wished for, the dark goddess who had existed
only in his doleful daydreams and who now had leaped
into his thoughts like an incandescent presence. But her
name?

He opened his eyes. Visually she was squat but somehow

24

still shapely. She looked a little bit the worse for wear, but
that was only to be expected. Inconsiderate hands would
have shifted her about from one place to the next and the
few rough marks of abuse and mishandling gave her
character that a glossy new machine would have lacked.
Squinting, he could just make out the row of small red
letters on the top left hand corner of her fascia :R-E-K-I-N-
A.

‘Rekina,’ he whispered, aloud, but the thought was in-
stantly transmitted to her own mind.

Very well, then: I am Rekina.

And so she was.

He had settled down, and after a while forgot that he
could hear the soft purr of components inside her shell as
she sorted quickly through his identity tape.

Tell me, she asked, what do you feel?

fenny for my thoughts?

Something like that. I want to know what you feel, now,
this instant, and what you feel other times. 1 want to know
everything about you. Tell me . ..

Anything in particular?

Anything. Anything that occurs to you . . .

With his eyes closed he had smiled. He settled down into
the couch but found that words — and ordered thoughts —
would not come. Perhaps a vague uneasiness still kept them
back.

She came closer. He could feel her moving through his
disordered thoughts like some ministering angel and care-
fully moving them into shape.

Tell me, Arthur, she cajoled. What troubles you? What
makes life so difficult for you?

He had opened his eyes then — they were wide and filled
with an overpowering fear. He gestured weakly towards
the tattered ceiling and the miracle beyond that they could
not see.

25

That . . , out there. Space and all those stars. And most of
all, time. It gnaws away at everything we do, at every goal
we set. A day, a week, a year — what does it matter? It’s all
for nothing in the end. How can we ever hope to under-
stand all that and discover the meaning of life? It . .. it’s all
so big — and we’re so small. How can there ever be an end
to anything — to time, to space, to life? How can there even
be a beginning ?

Is it necessary that these questions should be answered?

Yes? Otherwise man’s a joke. Why were we put here?
Why was this journey ever begun — and who turned the
key that started it all?

His mind writhed like a tin of worms, his thoughts scat-
tering every which-way. He writhed in agony on the couch
and waited for her answer.

But she remained silent.

How can I die not knowing these answers? he exclaimed.
How can I live not knowing these answers? How can I
hope when . . .

She said, quietly. To live at all is miracle enough.’

His mental tirade stopped and he looked up in wonder.
His lips moved — hesitantly — and gave up another line of
the poem : ’Here in my hammering blood-pulse is the
proof.’

He sat up, the wires trailing from his head and chest.
That’s Peake,’ he said. ‘Mervyn Peake.’ And then, excitedly,
‘Do you like poetry?’

Of course. Her voice in his mind filled him with wonder
and gratitude.

She had been programmed to like poetry and to serve his
deepest loves in her therapeutic manner.

He sank back into the couch. Why, that’s marvellous!
his mind exulted. We ... we can talk . . . discuss things!
Things I’ve never been able to do before. My wife . . . Laura
has never been able to understand. You see — she thinks —

26

says — it’s all camp : something for little blonde boys with
curls. She doesn’t understand that it’s

Something for all mankind?

That’s right. A spotlight that picks out and illuminates
the core of life . . .

. . . and holds up a mirror to ourselves.

For a moment her insight left him speechless. It was like
listening to his own thoughts magnified and thrown back to
him.

You do understand! he cried out. You do!

And she smiled. That is what 1 am here for . . .

That had been the beginning of the affair. And ever since
that auspicious encounter he had contrived to slip away
one night a week and pour out his soul to Rekina while his
witless wife watched their wall-vid with staring, vacant
eyes and did not bother to miss him : their life together had
become so pointless.

But tonight he felt restless and insecure and all her sooth-
ing could not erase the dark demon of doubt that lurked in
the dim corridors of his subconscious mind.

Why are you unsettled? she asked. Is anything the mat-
ter? Something you haven’t told me?

She poised, alert and waiting to transcribe any confession
on to her master tape.

1 . . .1 don’t know, Rekina.

Are you afraid of something?

He hesitated. Was he?

Nothing that 1 know of.

Her unseen hands stroked his enigmatic fever.

There now, she said, relax. And talk to me with your
mind, and with your heart, so that I may understand and
help you, Arthur. I am your woman: open to me. 1 will
listen and advise. I will drive away the dark demons that
haunt you. Talk to me

27

And so they talked. Of art and poetry and music and all
the things he had kept hidden from an inconsiderate world;
all the things he had loved and been too cowardly to pur-
sue. And Rekina absorbed his yearnings, his lack of fulfil-
ment, and gave him in return compassion and understand-
ing. She was the complete mistress of his mind and no man
could ask for more. In an age of spiritual and moral decay
Rekina and her kind were the chromium-plated angels of
mercy to the hopeless mind, a habit impossible to kick.

After a while she sang to him ; ancient folk songs tinged
with melancholy regret; they wove a mordant pattern
through his tortured mind and helped to bring him peace.
Yet a part of him refused to rest and it grew until it seemed
ready to consume his fragile flesh.

What is it, my darling? Your thoughts are so dark to-
night, and underneath them I can detect a desire I find un-
familiar. Have I said something — anything — that has
caused you concern? Have I

No. Nothing you have said ... or done.

Then what is it? Is it your wife. . . ?

His lips curled into a wry, uncaring grimace. No. She
hardly mattered.

Your work?

He almost laughed. As if such trivia mattered, now. Oh,
if only he could stop this sudden uncontrollable shaking of
his flesh !

The world, then? The mystery. Tell me, darling, and I
will understand. Haven’t I always?

The thing was welling up within him now. It was im-
patient and remorseless; he could not hold it back.

A few tears made their way out from underneath his
tightly closed lids and ran down his pale, quivering cheeks.
His lips trembled and formed words that were echoed in his
troubled mind.

‘Ah, love, let us be true to one another . ,

28

And, smiling, she took up the next line of Arnold’s poem.

‘For the world which seems to lie before us like a
vale of dreams . .

..so various, so beautiful, so new., . . .’

. . hath really neither joy, nor love, nor light . . .’

'. . . nor certitude, nor peace, nor help from pain . . .’

His voice broke and the image died in his mind. The
words of the poem slipped away and he began to sob.

Barling, what is it? I thought you loved Matthew
Arnold . . .

‘No!’ His eyes were wild and filled with unshed tears.
No — I mean — of course I do! But 1 love you Rekina

I know. Her smile was warm and consoling but it could
not hold back the tide that threatened to engulf him, mind
and body. And 1 love you, Arthur . . .

No. You don’t understand!

But 1 do. 1 must. Haven’t we discussed this many times
before?

No, not like this! 1 really love you. Rekina — can’t you
see what I’m trying to say? I LOVE you!

Now he understood his restless confusion and the nature
of the dark demon which had haunted his days and weeks
and months. His confusion had been a product of his mind
struggling with his heart — and the demon something his
conscience had dreamed up to frighten him away from the
truth. But now he didn’t care about the consequences his
love for Rekina entailed. He would follow it through until
he found the consummation he devoutly wished; one-
ness.

Wait, Arthur . . .

But he would not be put off. He rose unsteadily from his
couch and \valked towards her. His hands were out-
stretched like a figure half asleep and the wires trailed after
him like the slack strings left dangling by an absent pup-
peteer.

29

He knew what must be done.

No, Arthur. Wait! You do not understand. . . .

Yes I do, he countered. I love you. Rekina, and that’s all
that matters. And I have to have you. I need you

He longed to possess her, to make her his own, inviol-
ably; to achieve the mystical catharthis his soul craved.
And with it peace . . . and oneness.

His mind, like his arms, reached out to embrace her.
You’re everything I wished lor, everything I’ve ever
wanted. I love you and I want to be with you always.
Anything else is a poor substitute.

His master tape whirred wildly next to her heart as she
sought for some way to dissuade him from touching her, to
discourage his mad dream. Her actions were almost akin to
panic, an unlikely cybernetic reaction.

Arthur, wait a moment! Step back. Sit down. We must
talk this thing over . . .

But it was too late for any discussion : his grim compul-
sion drove him towards her.

His wild eyes did not see her battered, grimy shell nor the
red light blinking rapidly on her fascia. And somewhere in
the distance an alarm wailed . . . but he did not hear it.

He saw instead a tall, dark woman with proud breasts
and soft, unwavering eyes. And as he looked she opened her
arms to him and bade him welcome into her. He stepped
closer — his feet faltering — and he felt her arms reach out to
embrace him.

Rekina, his mind whispered. And then, aloud, ‘Rekina . . .’

He stepped forward to meet his consummation.

Arthur, what you wish cannot be! Arthur . . .

But he was no longer listening. Her voice was urgent and,
perhaps, slightly wistful, but there was nothing she could
do to stop him.

His arms reached out for her shoulders, to draw her
radiance into his influence . . .

30

. . . and found the sharp corners of her shell underneath
his trembling hands.

He sobbed and crushed her to him.

They embraced.

And in spite of her protests — in spite of the overpower-
ing sadness that surrounded this climactic meeting — he ex-
perienced a single moment of ecstatic happiness as his
hands closed around her. It was a pleasure more intense,
more real, than anything he had ever felt before. His mind
seemed to disintegrate and he found . . . oneness. And after
that . . .

Pain.

Of blinding intensity, so great that his body seemed to
burn and his mind was incinerated in one moment of in-
candescent agony.

And left only blackness.

The oneness to which he had always aspired.

The Madam found him with his arms outstretched across
the face of the console, his back towards her and his body
fused to the machine in an attitude of crucifixion. An out-
put terminal, they later ascertained, had come loose inside
the cyber and had touched the external shell. The console
had been alive with several thousand volts of electricity
when Talbot had touched it and he had died instantly.

The contact had almost welded his blackened body to the
front of the machine. The juices had been boiled and sucked
out of him and had sizzled and crackled in the grisly after-
math of his electrocution, and his limbs had congealed to
the side of the machine.

The Madam quickly summoned some of her assistants to
the room to clean up the mess. She tsked, tsked quietly to
herself and fell into a coarse harangue of her Maintenance
crew.

Accidents sometimes happened, she allowed, but they

31

really should be more careful shifting these things around.
Sometimes the business of keeping ahead of the law had
unpleasant consequences, of which the temporary loss of
revenue was the most regrettable.

The Maintenance men pried loose his body and let it fall
to the floor while they did a hasty patch-up job on the
cyber so that it could be brought back into service as
quickly as possible. The power was disconnected and the
broken terminal replaced. Then somebody thought about
cleaning up the mess.

Talbot had watched them with his blackened body and
his ruptured eyes and now they swathed him in a sheet and
carried him away from the room while somebody else
tidied it up and made it ready for the next client.

One of the men from Maintenance was obliged to seek
out Talbot’s car and drive it to a remote corner of suburbia
where its possible discovery would not be incriminating.
The disposal of the body was another matter that might
have proved troublesome.

If the effluent treatment plant hadn’t been situated so
conveniently.

32

FRONTIER INCIDENT
by

Robert Wells

First-contact-with-alien-Me stories are always
intriguing because primarily the plot must revolve
around communication in some form or another.
New author Robert Wells approaches the problem
in a fascinating manner.

FRONTIER INCIDENT

Things were distinctly strange from the start. There were
those unexpected orange lights peeling back off the hull like
fish scales. Then the complete radio blackout falling like a
curtain between the ship, its base, and its destination, and
the navigation panel playing tricks on its exasperated
crew.

Jerman, a landlubber, wanted to turn back at once, but
the Captain only grinned at his consternation. You never
knew what you might meet out here in the enormous,
empty mind of space. Besides, the Jubilee was the only
shot for New Erin in thirty days and was carrying Cornel, a
sick man whose sickness couldn’t wait for the next home-
bound ship. ‘We keep going,’ said the Captain. ‘Nothing
stops an ambulance. You’ll get used to meeting the un-
accountable out here.’

But whatever it was didn’t give them a chance to change
their minds. After an interval which ensured that they were
too far out to be able to return, it struck again decisively.

The analog course computers went first. The duty rating
reported the warning light as soon as it flashed in the
monitor, but before the Captain could even get to the flight
deck the instrument panel blew up. There was a nerve-jar-
ring arc of light and all the pointers swung to zero across
the control console.

In the navigation cockpit the maps of stars and the high-
ways plotted across them dissolved, leaving the screens
blank, the veiled, milky eyeballs of a blind man.

35

At the same moment power in two of the main propul-
sion units ceased and when the craft could be brought
under control again it was already deep into a chartless
region.

The sick mind of Cornel seemed to have some means of
perceiving this turning of the tables on the plans of his sane
companions. Lashed to a couch in his cabin, he began to cry
the same phrase over and over again in the voice of a dis-
honoured prophet. Its five words made no sense to anyone
but him, yet still had a sinister ring for the Jubilee's crew in
their predicament. ‘Into the waters . . .’ he proclaimed. ‘Into
the waters of night ! ’

‘Shall I quiet him?’ asked Jerman. He was a psychiatrist
detailed to accompany Cornel from the frontiers back
home for treatment.

‘Leave him. We need you here,’ said the Captain. He ran
a hand through his short-cropped grey hair, looking around
at the crewmen still stunned and injured by the incident.
He was very experienced. He had been through emergencies
before, but never one thrust upon him so startlingly. Behind
the determination in the hard, ice-blue eyes the mind was
racing, calculating.

The voyage was about one hundred and fifty space-days
old. Prior to the accident there had been maybe another
forty ahead of them before they got to the settled areas of
New Erin.

The Captain put on a pressurised work-suit and spent an
hour with his chief engineer inspecting the ship. Afterwards
he dropped back lightly into the cockpit of the flight deck.

He betrayed no emotion. Since before birth his society
had conditioned him and trained him as a spacer and he
had seen worse damage and ships that had survived it on
much more arduous journeys than the Jubilee’s routine run.
What was really worrying him was the apparent deflection
from the recognised warp into unexplored voids and the

36

inexplicable readings on the instruments which had re-
sumed their function. Of course they weren’t working cor-
rectly, but if they had been the indications they gave would
have meant that somehow Jubilee and its crew had dis-
appeared from the regular space-time ellipse.

The fission fuel they carried was virtually indestructible,
but it might become debilitated if serious loads were placed
on it in an effort to realign the ship to its correct course.

Basic training and the manuals set out rigid procedures to
be followed in any emergency. The Captain talked to his
lieutenant over the ship’s radio. ‘Bell, test the crash genera-
tors. If they’re still working see if you can beam a message
to Fallada for relay to the Agency Control. Tell them we’ve
been thrown off course. I think that basically it’s a feed
failure causing stress debilitation in the propulsion units.
There’s a serious power loss. Several input sections are com-
pletely unresponsive. 1 shall have to stabilise to repair and
conserve power. Ask if they can plot our position; what
kind of boost we’ll need to get back on track; whether
there’s any known landfall site handy.’

It was two hours before the radio-link man got any re-
sponse. When the reply did come the words were faint
after the oceans of emptiness they had swum. Sometimes
they were obliterated altogether by hurtling swarms of
meteorites or the huge messages of exploded stars hurrying
between galaxies to no particular destination. The words
had a strange ring about them, too.

‘You-er estimated plot five one six blank blank in Hydra.
Three four degrees blank of track. Region not mapped. Re-
gret no precise asteroidal data. If-er situation hazardous
advise if tug required in which case lade lade lade outlined
procedure three-er six.’

‘Reply,’ said the Captain tersely. Thanks. See we’re on
our own. Couldn’t survive tug wait. Must try for landfall to
save all power during tepair. Will coast. If no suitable site

37

appears will consult again. All here in good spirits. Until
next message — so long.’

But this courageous response was stripped of all meaning
almost as soon as it had been sent, for the radio blanket fell
again, more thoroughly than ever, and the Jubilee’s appara-
tus could receive nothing more.

They were alone. Every second carried them farther
away on their thirty-four degree variation. The attendant
shoals of lights returned and flowed back along the hull into
the deeps behind them.

‘Into the waters of night!’ Cornel screamed. ‘Into the
waters of night I ’

Double watches were set at all tele-observation posts and
the chief engineer coaxed enough power from the domestic
circuits to operate Jubilee's scanners.

On the second space-day after the emergency Bell re-
ported the craft moving into a scattered planetary system.

Jerman and the Captain joined him at one of the forward
screens and watched the ponderous approach of the nearest
body. The Captain had to use some of the ship’s power to
hold off from the gravitational field drag.

He looked with his unemotional eyes moving slowly
across the scanner screen. ‘One of them may provide a
landfall.’ He turned to the engineer. ‘Can we make a land-
ing manoeuvre?’

‘Should be possible with care, sir. The Fernlock brake-
systems aren’t affected. As long as we can get a kick from
at least two of the prop units 1 think she’ll make it.’

They’ll send a search team from Fallada anyway if they
don’t hear anything from us,’ said the Captain to no one in
particular. ‘Never mind. We must try to make a landfall to
get repairs under way. If any suitable place presents itself,
Bell, call me at once. I’ll take the controls myself.’

Jerman went with the Captain to his cabin. They fast-
ened themselves to the relaxation couches. ‘Chess?’ the

38

Captain inquired. He touched the fingertip control on the
arm of his couch and above him the board lit up set with
the last position of their unfinished game.

‘I’d rather talk,’ said the psychiatrist after a couple of
indecisive moves. He was a lot younger than the Captain
and his thin, straw-coloured hair wasn’t cut short enough to
prevent it often falling forward over his forehead, giving
him a rakish, student look.

He found it difficult to converse with spacers. They were
trained not to deal in imagination, speculation, hypothesis,
or pure abstraction. But in their present plight Jerman felt
unequal to the inevitable chess defeat.

‘1 guess you’ve seen a number of these worlds. Captain?’

‘Seven planetary systems around suns,’ the Captain re-
cited. ‘Two dead masses without known orbit. A long time
ago. When I was still young enough to be a pioneer.’ He
sighed and closed his eyes. He was quite prepared to sleep
if Jerman didn’t want to play chess with him.

‘Any of them carry life?’

‘None. Not our sort of life. Sometimes primitive botanical
or chemical structures. Why?’

‘Only because this is an unexplored region,’ said Jerman
uncomfortably, ‘and it gives me the creeps. 1 begin to won-
der what we might find. . . .’

‘You’ve never explored, of course,’ said the Captain. Tou
know, the more we push the frontiers forward the more we
become convinced that no form of life equal to homo
sapiens has evolved anywhere in the approachable parts of
the galaxy,’

It was a predictable answer from a member of the Cap-
tain’s profession. It appeared (Jerman figured) somewhere
between page three and page seven of any Cosmonaut
Manual.

The Captain continued : ‘There were the Kappa II voles
and in remote history the sub-human Troitans. I guess you

39

know the lay branch of Space History anyway. The Abeni-
atiks — they even developed a primitive form of hydro-pro-
pulsion in their tepid seas. They were the only reasoning
organisms Man encountered. Everywhere we’ve been wel-
comed and adulated as superior beings. On the evidence
that’s what we are. We have no serious rivals.’

‘All the species you mentioned are extinct now?’

‘They ceased to evolve.’ The Captain re-extinguished
them with a wave of his hand. ‘Contact with more complex
and more highly developed organisms proved fatal to
them.’

‘Exactly. What I was trying to suggest is that perhaps
some day, beyond the present frontiers or off the beaten
space tracks — maybe right here, for example — ^we may be
the ones to get an unpleasant shock.’ Jerman’s boyish face
was puckered up with his concern to get his worry across
to the spacer. He shoved his hair out of his eyes.

The Captain yawned. ‘I only know what is or has been.
Go to sleep or you’ll end up like that poor, deranged
creature we’re supposed to be hurrying to New Erin.’

‘And that’s another thing,’ the psychiatrist persisted.
‘We’ve got millions of years of evolution behind us and
here we are, the superior beings, still with a flaw which
makes a nonsense of our greatest asset — our unique asset —
the power to reason. Cornel’s mind is broken ’

‘Complex machinery breaks down,’ snapped the Captain.
‘At New Erin cephologists will analyse the fault. Cornel
will be restored if the damage isn’t too great. His sort of
defeat is slowly being eliminated — ^the way we’ve elimi-
nated all the others.’

Jerman said nothing and after a minute’s silence he heard
the Captain breathing quietly as he slept.

The Jubilee drove on for two space-days, swallowing the
emptiness between the planets, the glowing butt of its nose
aimed at the system’s red dwarf sun.

40

Bell, a heavy man with the same hard eyes as his captain,
dropped into the cabin and woke the uneasy sleepers there.

‘Sir, we’ve picked up a planet that’s within the prescribed
graph range.’

‘Has it been rechecked?’

‘Yes. The spectrum indicates vestigial atmosphere of non-
toxic gases and the presence of surface liquid.’

The Captain scrambled up. While Bell took over the con-
trol console he and Jerman watched the planet’s approach
on one of the scanners.

The Captain checked the instruments himself. He reached
a decision rapidly. ‘Lieutenant, have all hands stand-by.
We’ll try to go into orbit immediately and identify a suit-
able site for landfall.’

It was a difficult manoeuvre for the crippled ship, but
several hours later Jubilee was orbiting the planet within a
band of numerous asteroidal satellites on a track which
took it diagonally between the poles.

‘Water,’ said Bell. ‘It looks to nie like all damn’ water.’

It was very dark — night-blue or violet at the distance
from which they observed it.

‘I thought I made out something different in Red Sector
last time round,’ said one of the ratings.

‘What?’ asked Bell.

‘Kind of islands or rocks or atolls or something, sir.
Water seemed to be breaking.’

‘Concentrate all your viewers on Red Sector,’ the Captain
ordered. ‘If you see anything enlarge it on the screen
here.’

They orbited again. The domestic circuits had all been
drained to summon sufficient power to operate the control
instruments and the emergency drive equipment. There was
no hot food; light and power in the living quarters had been
eliminated and the gravity drag was so reduced that any
sudden action had to be carefully controlled.

41

They tracked over the vital sector yet once more. There ! ’
shouted Bell and Jerman together. ‘There it is ! ’

The rating closed the tuning control. Red Sector came up
on the captain’s screen and expanded as the instrument en-
larged the crucial spot to full capacity.

‘Hold it.’ cried Bell. ‘It won’t go any more.’

‘It’s a chain of small islands,’ murmured the Captain.
‘We’ll put an instrumented slave rocket in to check them.
Bell, you see to it.’

‘Will our radio be strong enough to pick up the signals
though?’

‘I don’t know. We’ll have to take a chance anyway.
Fortunately the range is short.’

‘Where shall I put it in, sir ? ’ One of the ratings stood by
ready to push the blast button.

‘Try that large atoll — the one like a broken ellipse.’ The
Captain’s eyes were hard, icy again. ‘Hell! That sea’s as
dark as night — huh?’

The psychiatrist looked at the Captain. He jerked the
wisps of hair back out of his eyes and looked around at the
crew. He seemed to be the only one who had found the
Captain’s comment significant. The crew were all impas-
sively about their business. Rigid training compelled each
one of them to concentrate on the job in hand and only
that. Imagination had no part in their everyday affairs.

Hardly daring to trust his own imagination, Jerman got
out of his seat carefully and floated from the cockpit. He
fancied that the Captain rewarded him with a brief glance
of annoyance as he went, but he couldn’t be sure of this.

With the words still echoing in his head, he made his
way to Cornel’s cabin. The sedative he had given the sick
man would certainly have worn off by now. Jerman
dreaded having to open the padded door to hear again those
prophetic cries. But when he. looked through the peephole
into the cell it was much worse. Cornel was peacefully

42

asleep for the first time in weeks; and there was an innocent
smile on his face. He looked like someone who had come
home after a long, hard journey.

The planet upon which Jubilee finally achieved a landing
enjoyed a long day and a brief unnatural night illuminated
by a mauve glow from its numerous attendant asteroids.

While the crew worked at the damage to discover its true
extent and repair it if they could, the Captain made several
exploratory journeys in the uni-jet cutter. There was nothing
within range' to be found. Apart from the string of small
atolls where the Jubilee now rested uncertainly on its
landing probes, the surface of the planet in that vicinity
seemed to be covered by a tideless sheet of liquid, empty of
marine life. For want of a better name this came to be
known to the travellers as The Sea and its constituent
water. In fact it was neither, being of a composition which
defied analysis.

As a routine measure on any new landfall, planned or
not, the Captain ordered samples to be taken up and sealed.
But the liquid defied capture. It either spontaneously de-
stroyed itself or changed structurally under unfamiliar con-
ditions and environment. The containers were always per-
fectly empty, perfectly dry within a few hours of being
filled.

The ship had been on the planet several Earth-long days
when the Emissaries arrived. No one recognised them as
such. Jerman, in fact, suffered a disappointment.

His patient had been enjoying a period of strange, almost
lucid tranquillity since landfall. When the powerful voices
began to speak to him, the mind therapist didn’t recognise
them at first as in any way extra-human. He just believed
that poor Cornel’s madness had returned.

Only the failure of his most potent drugs disturbed him
suflRciently into taking careful notice of Cornel’s ravings.

43

After checking to make sure he wasn’t mistaken, he called
the Captain.

We convert er to you speech through this er
YOUR colleague. Gomel’s lips didn’t move. The strange
sounds, distorted and with a marked reverberation like a
maladjusted loud-speaker system among mountains, issued
from his throat.

We welcome you er to (here the name, syllable after
syllable of it, was lost upon the human ear). We are all er
AROUND YOU BUT CANNOT MANIFEST ER AS OUR PLANES
EXISTENCE SEPARATE FROM ER YOURS AND DANGEROUS TO
ADJUST ER. We intend you no harm. We repeat er no
HARM. Your vehicle damage is not er repairable
WITHOUT ER OUR ASSISTANCE.

‘Bloody nonsense,’ snarled the Captain. ‘You didn’t
just drag me here to suffer the ravings of this madman, 1
hope ? ’

Jerman didn’t reply. The message boomed on heed-
lessly.

We er recommend you take er account of our terms
FOR assistance YOUR SAFE CONDUCT BACK TO ER YOUR
BEING.

‘The hell! I won’t listen to any more.’ The Captain
flushed angrily to the roots of his grey hair. He wrenched
open the door of Cornel’s cell and stalked away.

The voices in Cornel insisted without a pause. They
seemed now to be directed at Jerman.

You ER OF THE UNCLOSED MIND HAVE HEARD. WE RE-
TURN ER TOMORROW AND REPEAT ONCE MORE OUR TERMS.
You MUST ER CONVINCE YOUR COMMANDER WE ARE REASON-
ABLE AND TERMS WILL ALSO BE REASONABLE. We SALUTE

YOU. Until tomorrow.

Jerman got his mouth open to reply, but the words stuck
in his dry throat.

Cornel was a crumpled heap on the couch. He looked

44

like a puppet flung down after a performance, its strings
released. Jerman, looking even more like a scolded school-
boy, licked his lips and crept out to find the Captain.

That night the section of feed line which it had taken
days to shape and link, dissolved at the welds and the Jubi-
lee was left as crippled as when it had landed.

Grimly the Captain rationed the ship’s supplies. He di-
vided the crew into watches and they worked round the
clock to repair the mischief, but their sophisticated tools,
although they continued to function perfectly, now had
small effect on the damage. It seemed as though a screen
had dropped between them and the ship. Showers of orange
sparks fell to the ground and vanished as they laboured in
vain.

Each evening Jerman returned to Cornel’s cell to main-
tain contact with the Emissaries. The madman seemed
hardly to have an existence of his own. He was silent all
day, a vehicle for communication only; empty except when
the planet’s visitors had use for him.

Each time they returned, their demands for discussion
with the Captain became more urgent, their language more
uncompromising.

Three days after the first visitation the Captain finally
abandoned the attempt to repair Jubilee. He issued a double
ration of food and drugs to the exhausted crew.

Nearly everyone slept where he had eaten. Only Jerman
sought out the Captain in the deserted radio cockpit where
his latest efforts to arouse a response had encountered the
now perpetual silence.

Their eyes met. ‘You’ve admitted to yourself that they
exist, haven’t you?’ said Jerman.

The spacer looked away. He looked older and his pale
eyes less resolute than when the emergency had first hit
Jubilee. ‘1 can’t understand what it is they wish to do with
us. What do they want? They have us here at their mercy.

45

They can take whatever it is — the ship, our lives — every-
thing ! ’

‘You’ll never know what it is unless you come and talk
to them.’

‘How can you expect me to go in there and hold a con-
versation with a madman ?‘

‘It isn’t Cornel who’s speaking,’ Jerman urged. ‘You
know what — I think they’ve chosen him because of his
affliction. Reason left his mind and gave them a loophole to
enter it. Maybe they’ve been waiting for centuries. I believe
they ambushed us when they knew what we were carrying
in our sick-bay. Now they have a purpose for us.’

‘Let’s go,’ said the Captain. ‘We’ll find out.’

The two men traversed the sleeping ship. At the cell door
Jerman cautiously opened the peephole. Cornel was mov-
ing restlessly on his couch.

‘Open the door,’ ordered the Captain. He preceded the
psychiatrist into the cell. Cornel subsided into a motionless
heap.

We all salute er you. Captain. We salute er you. The
Emissary voice — or was it a chorus of voices ? — spoke from
the depths of other worlds through the breach in the wall
which they had awaited so long artd chosen so fastidiously.

Politely but uncompromisingly the terms for the safe
conduct of Jubilee were outlined.

The Emissaries — they had no name which humans could
understand — had for centuries watched the progress of
humanity across the galaxy. Now at this frontier the time
for demarcation had come. Human expansion might con-
tinue in other directions, but there must be no encroach-
ment upon sections of the galaxy long since the heritage of
the Emissaries’ own, distinctive culture.

The powers of the Emissaries in their own sphere were
sufficient to prevent the repair and departure of the
humans’ space craft. Its arrival had been carefully planned

46

and engineered (as Jerman had suspected) because of the
presence on board of Cornel.

In return for the saving of the expedition the Emissaries
required the Captain to return to the human colonised parts
of the galaxy taking with him the Emissaries’ demarcation
warning.

‘But why can’t our two evolutions come together and co-
operate?’ asked the Captain. Having drowned his scepti-
cism on the possibility of other, reasoning beings he found
his space-ethical training surfacing once more. Two cul-
tures such as yours and mine could exercise a tremendous
force for good. Great gaps in the knowledge of both our
creations — our development and the universe we share — all
these could be closed in a single co-operative act.’

You, A HUMAN, HAVE ER THE AUDACITY TO SUGGEST THIS ?
So far as human emotions were identifiable in the Emis-
saries, the question seemed to contain both incredulity and
mirth. What happened to every evolutionary move-
ment WITH WHICH HUMANITY HAS COME INTO CONTACT? IT
HAS BEEN DESTROYED. We DO NOT CHOOSE TO ARGUE. (The
Captain choked on the retort that came to his lips.) We er
OFFER YOU THESE TERMS.

We cannot destroy you but you will destroy your-
selves IF ER YOU REFUSE TO CARRY OUR WARNINGS BACK
TO YOUR KIND. ThE LINK ER BETWEEN YOU AS YOU ARE NOW
AND YOU AS YOU WERE IS VERY TENUOUS.

The Captain shrugged. ‘I can’t guarantee that my civilisa-
tion will believe me or even if it does that it will take notice
of your warning.’

We ask only that you carry the message.

‘I shall do it.’

There is one condition more.

The Captain didn’t respond and the voices continued:
You will leave er to us and in our care the man

CORNEL THROUGH WHOM WE SPEAK TO YOU.

47

The Captain opened his mouth to reply but closed it
again before any sound escaped. Jerman couldn’t tell from
his expression whether the response was to have been a flat
negative or an indifferent assent.

What do you say. Captain ?

‘No member of our race may be left in the hands of
strangers.’

But this being is already alien to you. His brain
WE KNOW has not THE REASON WHICH DISTINGUISHES
YOURS.

After a short silence the Captain said, ‘1 must have time
to consider this.’

One hour ?

‘1 shall return tomorrow.’

Jerman caught his arm. His hair flopped down over his
anxious, boyish face. ‘Agree now,’ he whispered frantically.
‘It’s our only hope of getting out of this.’

‘I shall return tomorrow,’ said the Captain as though he
hadn’t heard.

Commander, we salute er you. Until tomorrow. We

SHALL AWAIT YOU ER HERE.

Their last echoes faded down the long corridors through
which they came. The Emissaries were gone. Cornel stirred,
woke, looked at the two men who so unexpectedly shared
his cell and began to laugh uncontrollably.

Can they hear us? Can they see what we think? Jerman
wrote out the questions with a shaky hand on a page ripped
from a calculation block and shoved it across the table to
the Captain.

They were in the Captain’s cabin with Bell. The crew had
been informed of the new developments in their predica-
ment. Time was running out and still the Captain hadn’t
revealed his decision.

He looked at the young psychiatrist compassionately. He

48

didn’t answer the question. He said calmly: ‘I can’t give
them Cornel. You know that.’

‘But why not? He’s lost to humanity already. We only
had a certain time-margin to get him to New Erin. That
must have run out by now. Even with his mind in the care
of the best doctors we have it couldn’t be saved now. You
can’t sacrifice all the rest of us. . . .’

The procedure is quite clear/ said the Captain. ‘Article
1 8. No human organism, living or dead, must be abandoned
where it may fall into the possession of powers alien to the
human race.’

‘Cornel is useless to them,’ cried Jerman. ‘He’s not even
human any more.’

‘Precisely. And why is he not ? Because his mind is shat-
tered. Tell me : what carried us from the old seas of Earth
to walk upright, to conquer Solar and stretch out among
the stars? Reason! Awareness of ourselves. Now then, if
you were another reasoning life form which saw in Man
only a threat to your existence how would you cripple
Man?’

‘You’d take away his reason,’ said Bell. The chunky lieu-
tenant’s face was screwed up anxiously as he looked at his
commander. He looked resigned. Trained in the same
thought patterns as the Captain, he had readily foreseen
how the argument must end.

‘No,’ said Jerman. ‘No — I don’t believe it.’

‘Oh, yes. That’s why they want Cornel,’ said the Captain
patiently. They will take his mind apart to discover how
they may be able to alter all human minds. When they’ve
done the research they need to do they’ll be able to speak in
all our minds just like they speak now in Cornel’s. It will be
a weapon against which humanity hasn’t even begun to
consider defences.’

‘But haven’t they done it already?’ argued Jerman.
‘They’ve already found their way into Cornel.’

49

‘Yes. But I think that until they can get him outside the
ship and start the process of transmuting him to the same
plane of existence as themselves and their damned water
they won't be able to get down to details and analysis. Per-
haps at the moment they know how but not why. They’ve
only scratched the surface of their purpose.’

‘We’re going to miss an opportunity which may never
occur again in our lifetime. We could be the ones to carry
back to humanity the news of another powerful reasoning
force in the universe ! ’

The price is too high,’ said the Captain. ‘And maybe we
would be carrying the seeds of destruction of our own intel-
ligence at the same time.’

‘Suppose their motives are purely defensive?’

‘Yes, I’ve considered that. For heavens’ sake! Do you
think I don’t want to go on living, too, Jerman? What logic
tells me is that any intelligence which so carefully plans
and awaits its opportunity isn’t likely to remain defensive
and content in its own sphere for ever.’

The Captain paused. He said with a sigh, ‘Perhaps one
day we shall come together. All that we here can do now is
to deny them one step in their plan.’

‘Suppose they can hear us now? Won’t they try to stop
us?’ It was Bell, still resigned, only planning along with the
Captain the last, logical steps they must take.

‘No. I think that within the ship they’re powerless. Any-
how, we’ll see. Let’s go.’

The three men shook hands.

‘But they said they couldn’t destroy,’ said Jerman des-
perately as they left the cabin.

‘Oh, yes,’ said the Captain, ‘but you recall that they
added: You will destroy yourselves. Now — I think I see
what they mean. Just think! How much beard have you
grown since the emergency hit us? Why won’t any of the

50

chronometers work — not even those you wind and set by
hand?’

Jerman and Bell stared at him. The psychiatrist half
shook his head. Bell said, ‘Jees ! ’ softly.

‘1 think,’ said the Captain calmly, ‘that to get us here at
all it was necessary for them to take us out of time — our
time — and suspend us between their being and ours. Un-
fortunately only they have the secret of how to put us
back.’

The crew were informed of what the Captain had de-
cided to do. The ship was silent as the Captain, followed by
Bell and Jerman led the way to Cornel’s cabin. Jerman
thought he could hear the thud of the heavy holster against
the Captain’s hip at every step he took.

As soon as the cell door was open the Emissaries
launched a barrage of threats and cajolery. You er reason-
ing BEINGS SURELY CANNOT DESTROY YOURSELVES OUT OF
PETTY CONCEIT. THINK AGAIN. We DEMAND ER THAT YOU
RECONSIDER

The Captain withdrew the short-range atomiser from its
holster. He primed it patiently, seeming to inyite the visi-
tants to intervene if they could.

No, Commander ! No ! It is absurd to do er this. We
INSIST. We have a further suggestion . . .

‘Thank you,’ said the Captain. ‘I think the first round
belongs to us after all.’ There was only the merest hint of
fanaticism in his voice.

He levelled the weapon. At that range its penetration was
absolute whatever barrier the Emissaries might try to inter-
pose. The invaded organ would be destroyed.

‘Into the night . . .’ moaned Cornel. ‘Into the waters of
night.’

‘Don’t be afraid,’ said the Captain. ‘This time I think we’ll
be coming with you.’ He squeezed the trigger.

All the hands on their watches and on the Jubilee’s

chronometers jerked convulsively forward, marking a frac-
tion of time. The instrument panel blew up. There was a
nerve-jarring arc of light and all the pointers swung to zero
across the control console. The maps of stars and the high-
ways plotted across them dissolved, leaving the screens
blank — the veiled, milky eyeballs of a blind man.

A second later there was nothing; only the infinitely
empty darkness and drifting off the spaceway between the
frontier and New Erin a black, weightless cinder.

52

THE BIG DAY
by

Donald Malcolm

Computerised mechanisation — less working hours
= more leisure = boredom and eventual stagna-
tion. A benevolent government would have to think
of something to keep the individual happy. How
about a modern form of gladiatorial games?

THE BIG DAY

The woman, her long, raven hair flowing behind her like a
banner, ran to him across the moon-cold sands, her gown a
flickering of lambent yellow flame.

She was calling his name above the gentle thunder of the
surf. He reached out his arms towards her.

The day is Tuesday, jth of May, 2046. The time is 5
A.M. It is time to prepare.

The DAY IS

He clawed his way out of the dream like a man saved
from drowning. He was still partially submerged, but the
woman was fading fast.

The voice, issuing from the grill next to his left ear, be-
gan for the third time : The day is

‘1 know what day it is ! ’ he snarled, opening his eyes with
an irritable snap. He detached the electrodes from his skull
and stowed them away in what it amused him to call the
dream decanter. As with everything else in his life, even his
dreams were programmed.

The fact that he was awake registered in the appropriate
memory circuit of the Central Computer, 24.15663 miles
away from the sub-computer at reference 3-N5-2-18-5. The
town, the district, Teoplebox No. 2’, as he thought of it
derisively, the storey, the room number.

Putting his hands behind his head, he gazed up at the pale
lemon plastic ceiling, the tint chosen exactly to harmonise
with his personality. It was a funny colour for an ego, he
reflected. But maybe it wasn’t so bad. Mr. Gresham in

SS

Room 6 : his ceiling was a screaming red. He’d caught a
brief glimpse of it, one day.

Outside, an uncomputerised bird chirpily welcomed
another day. The Big Day.

While one part of his mind dwelt again on the dream,
another part was running a countdown on the computer.

Four, three, two, one. Silently, he began to form the
words along with the machine.

The occupant of 3-N5-2-18-5 has failed to rise from
HIS bed. If he has not done so in ten seconds his
RECORD WILL BE DEBITED.

He began counting again. He took a malicious delight in
defying the computer, within limits. At the count of nine,
he bounded out of bed, like a boxer who had been taking a
rest, and began to shadow-box, his breath coming in sharp
snorts through his nose. The plastic floor was pleasantly
warm beneath his spatulate feet.

So much for Ava and James, he thought, a trifle gloomily.
No more the tragic Flying Dutchman: once again, and in-
evitably, he was Mark Hanson. At least they hadn’t done
away with names. Yet. He slaved fifteen hours a week, five
hours a day, as a Junior Programmer at the district elec-
tronics complex. As part of his regulated leisure, he was
active in the Old Film Society.

He struck a naked pose. Behind him, the bed had folded
into the wall. ‘I am master of all I survey!’ he intoned, his
voice ringing like that of Olivier before Agincourt. And
what he surveyed wasn’t much. He was facing the window,
with its personality-orientated curtains, in a design of quiet
whorls, like questing mouths. He pirouetted slowly to his
left, like a music-box figurine. The shower had appeared,
with mechanical rabbitiness, from the ceiling, and waited
to receive him, a sacrifice to daily hygiene. Next to it, in a
sealed bag, his clothes for the day lay in a slot.

Above it, the Mural of the Month glowed, a meaningless

56

cacophony of shapes and colours. It was based, as he knew,
on the North Five District Group Harmony Personality, but
it jarred him. As if sensing his hostility, it writhed like an
angry snake.

Next, on the corridor wall, was the door, keyed to his
unique infra-red wavelength. Where the bed had been, a
seat now extruded and a table stuck out, like a hanged
man’s tongue, from the third wall, Dialafood Disc at the
ready, pristine utensils swathed in plastic. His eye travelled
next to the blank part of wall that would" open, at the right
time, to reveal his personal possessions.

His built-in clock was warning him that the computer
would be after him again, if he dallied much longer. The
wall to the right of the window hid behind its plastic facade
a television screen.

Resolutely, he averted his gaze from the window and the
blue brightness beyond. Master of all I survey ! The words
were sour in his.mind.

Briskly, he stepped into the shower, forestalling the com-
puter’s rebuke by a micro-second of time. He grinned as the
transparent sheath slid up from the floor and water, at just
the right temperature, and mixed with soap, needled his
body. He slapped and rubbed at himself, although it wasn’t
necessary, as the shower was, naturally, one hundred per
cent thorough. But flesh was a subjective reality in an
objective world. Perhaps it was the only reality, he didn’t
know. The slap and rub routine made him feel more of an
individual and less of a cypher.

The mixture changed, first to warm, then to cold. He
liked that bit least of all. The water went off and blasts of
hot air billowed around him, drying the moisture quickly
and efficiently.

If he had been pushing to the dark recesses of his mind
what day this was, the pile of clothes before him dragged
the knowledge out into the open.

57

This was no familiar office shirt and shorts, with light
underwear and shoes.

The white suit was thicker, heavier, and one-piece. There
was also heavy one-piece underwear and coarse socks. And

the shoes He wondered how he would manage to

endure their weight. But even as he touched them he
felt a thrill compounded of fear and pleasure. The
rig-out was completed by a helmet, scarf, goggles, and
gloves.

Leaving them, he went swiftly to the window and looked
down. His heart was booming. Laid out was a diabolically
designed two-and-a-half mile racing circuit, distilled from
the elements of the Ring and Le Mans, Indianapolis and
Sebring. His gaze followed every bend and twist and curve,
then wandered beyond it. There ran one of the super high-
ways that held Britain in a ribboned embrace. Even as he
watched, a great silver liner bus flashed along on its cushion
of air, heading north at three hundred miles an hour. The
railway system had long gone, but that particular liner bus
was called The Flying Scotsman.

Please stand before the autodoc, the grill requested.

He took another look down at the waiting circuit.

Waiting for him.

He moved to the autodoc, situated above the television
screen, and a bunch of probes, like tentacles, swooped on
him, checking him over, as they did every morning.

His mind wandered, shutting out the intimate gropings of
the tentacles. He knew what day it was. His day. The day
he would go down to that circuit and drive a car : a racing
car. He would be one with the ghosts of Fangio and Clarke,
Ascari and Hill. He would experience the thunder of the
engine, the feeling of controlled power under acceleration,
the bite of wheels on the track, the sensation of fleeing from
a world that had fallen into the clutches of mindless
machines.

58

He would have a machine that he could bend to his will.
Exhilaration flared in him.

The autodoc found him perfectly fit, as he knew it
would, and retracted its probes, like a satiated monster. He
went and put on the underwear and the socks, leaving the
suit.

He kept his eyes on it as he moved to the table and
dialled orange juice, bacon, eggs, toast, butter, marmalade,
and Russian tea.

The meal appeared, prepared exactly as he liked each
individual item. He ate automatically — normally he en-
joyed his food — his mind reliving the highlights of the
many old racing films he had watched at the Society. Even
the memory made his blood tingle with anticipation and
fear.

One day in the year everyone was completely free of the
machines, at liberty to match his, or her, wits against
whatever they chose to do. For him, this year, it was car
racing.

There were always accidents, of course. One of the dare-
devils in the complex had been bitten in two by a shark a
few years previously. He’d seen the film of the tragedy a
number of times at the Society. It had always fascinated
and repelled him. But accidents were a necessary — even
desirable — concomitant of the Big Day, as it had come to
be known.

Life in a computerised society was featureless, safe, dull.
There was plenty of everything for everybody. Although
people were allowed one Big Day per year, comparatively
few took the opportunity to loosen the deadly chains. Life
was too safe, too good, to risk throwing away. Mark had
long considered that people no longer realised that life was
for living, not for hoarding against a stagnant and un-
known future. The treacly tenaciousness of society bored
and frustrated him and he longed to break free.

59

But the whole world was in the same grip and there was
nowhere to run. Man had turned his back on space and the
stars. They beckoned in vain. Instead, Earth had been tamed
and turned into a garden, from the depth of the oceans
to the heights of the mountains, from the poles to the
Equator.

6 A.M. Please indicate now your decision by pressing
THE appropriate BUTTON.

He popped a dental pill into his mouth, rose, and walked
to the window. Behind him, the table was cleared silently
and folded away. The grill waited. Again, he stared down at
the track. A blood-red car sat at the starting grid. His mouth
was dry. Press a button : make a decision. Press the blue no
button and sink into oblivion for another year. Press the red
YES button

He glanced sideways at the buttons, like mamillary Good
and Evil. He was curiously incapable of reaching a decision.
There were elusive thoughts, half-hidden desires, trying to
break the surface of his mind. For the first time in his life he
was deeply afraid of something and he didn’t know what it
was.

He rubbed his hands together. The grill crackled. He took
two paces and his finger executed the red yes button.

6.05 A.M. Proceed to the track.

He pulled on the suit and, carrying the other things, went
to the lift that ran down the centre of the building. There
was no one else about. The door opened and he stepped
inside the lift. He had chosen early morning, because he
thought he would feel fitter both in mind and in body. As
the lift descended, he admitted to himself that there was
another reason. The names or numbers of people who chose
to take advantage — if that was the right word, he con-
sidered wryly — of the Big Day were never disclosed. He
knew that very few in his building would do so.

Many of the faint-hearts took vicarious pleasure in seeing

60

the daredevils off and he hadn’t wanted that. He wasn’t sure
that he was doing the right thing. Again, he hadn’t been
sure on any of his six previous Big Days. He’d started at
fifteen and he had survived, although the pot-holing adven-
ture of two years ago had almost proved fatal.

So he had decided to go out early, have his ten circuits of
the track, and then try and settle once again in the dull rut
of society for another year.

The lift reached the ground floor and the door opened.
The hallway, flooded with sunlight, was bleak and empty,
and somehow he felt cheated. Strange exhilaration filtered
through his body, like lava running along faults in the
Earth’s crust, seeking a way out. And the way out was vio-
lent, through the mouth of a volcano.

There should have been cheering crowds, like those that
had greeted the racing heroes of old. People should have
been clapping him on the back and wishing him ‘Good luck’
and little boys should have been thrusting out grubby, de-
manding pieces of paper for his autograph, not wanting to
wait until after the race, in case he was killed, an Arthurian
knight on wheels.

The exhilaration persisted, although overlaid by a sense
of anti-climax.

Outside, the sunlight struck him a glaring blow and he
shielded his eyes. There was a solitary official standing be-
side the low, red Formula Two Lotus, the type in which
Clarke had won his immortal victory at Indianapolis. They
had spared no detail. He had asked for an exact copy. He
didn’t recall Clarke’s car having been blood-red, but that
didn’t matter.

The official consulted his vocaboard and said in a bored
voice : '3-N5-2-18-5, Mark Hanson.’ There was no question.
Would-be suicides were in short supply. One car, one
driver. Hanson took the preferred hallucina-pill. He ack-
nowledged the statement and the receipt of the pill, speak-

61

ing into the vocaboard microphone. The official walked
away without a word.

He rolled the pill between his fingers. His brow furrowed.
The pill was dark blue. The colour had always been pale
green, before. It probably wasn’t important so he swal-
lowed it.

He was standing next to the car, which gleamed in the
morning light. He ran his hand over the windscreen and the
steering wheel and the bodywork, rejoicing in the power
that would live under his direction. He walked slowly
round the car in silent admiration. Then he climbed in, slid-
ing his legs in until he was practically lying down. For a
brief instant, he felt as if he was going into a pothole again
and the memory brought a sourness to his throat. Precise
details of how he had extricated himself from that pre-
dicament had always been vague in his mind, no matter how
hard he had tried to recall them.

The pill was taking effect and already he was slipping
into another world. He started the engine and the car
growled like a disturbed cougar. There was no sound,
except the singing of a bird and, far away on the road, the
faint passage of a liner bus.

Then, gradually, he became aware of festive crowds and
milling mechanics and the muted purr of the other cars and
the smell of fuel and oil and rubber. And fear.

He adjusted the scarf about his mouth and pulled the
goggles over his eyes. Almost delicately, he engaged first
gear, handling the short stick like an artist’s brush, and let
the car roll slowly forward. The cars were straining at the
leash. He heard his name shouted. The starter’s flag came
down with the finality of an executioner’s axe

The Lotus surged away and, of course, he was in the lead,
and hugging the inside of the track. Behind him, the other
cars snarled their frustration and the wind whipped at him.
The rev-counter rose rapidly and he was doing over a hun-

62

dred miles an hour along the straight, the wheels singing on
the track.

The first, sharp, right-hand curve was rushing towards
him and he braked slightly and drifted the car round, con-
tinuing to hold the inside position. The car was handling
beautifully. He was free again, for the first time in a year
and he shouted aloud into the tearing wind.

The straight was very short, here, and he was coming
into a bend. He braked, double-declutched, changed down,
then accelerated. Oil on the track. The car slewed as he
gripped the wheel and, for the brief instant that he was
facing the wrong way, he saw a G.T. Ford, closely followed
by a Ferrari, starting to take frantic evasive action. Then he
was round again and gunning the engine to catch another
Lotus. The Ferrari shot past on the inside, but the G.T. Ford
ploughed into the embankment on the outside and burst
into flames.

He was lucky to be still alive. The oil patch had been
real. The part of his mind unaffected by the drug realised
that, and was afraid. Why had the oil been put on the
track? Was someone trying to kill him? But that was
absurd. People didn’t go around killing each other, these
days. Aggressive traits were carefully filtered out, which
was probably the reason why so few people took up the
challenge of the Big Day. He fretted at the problem.

Relentlessly he piled on the miles, passing the Lotus and
the Ferrari in quick succession. This was what life was all
about ! Another G.T. Ford was just ahead of him, its driver
skilfully following every curve and bend, giving Hanson no
chance to take him. For five laps he hung grimly behind the
Ford’s exhaust, his nostrils and throat clogged with the
smell of fumes and burned rubber.

Everything was so real The pyre of the crashed G.T.

Ford still burned every time he passed it. Feelings . . . sounds
. . . smells. . . .

63

The image — it was an image — of the Ford ahead of
him began to fade. In its place there was a blur which
gradually became a face of a young, handsome man.

Where ? At the Old Film Society. The man who had

been bitten in half by the shark ! His hands continued to
guide the car, to do all that was required.

The man was smiling. Another face appeared at his left
shoulder. That of a beautiful, long-haired girl. The one who
had fallen down a mountain-side, on her Big Day, two years
ago. He had seen the film at the Society.

Who had taken those films and for what purpose ? When
he thought about it, he recalled that there were quite a lot
of such films at the Society, all recording the deaths of
people on the Big Day.

The faces faded and the Ford was there again. His oppor-
tunity came. The Ford took a bend too sharply and the
front off-side wheel went off the track. The driver wrenched
his steering wheel, over-compensated, and Hanson’s Lotus
thundered through the momentary gap, causing the Ford to
brake hard.

The car whined round the track, with only two laps to
go. His mind was a vortex of confusion and terror. But
reality, all three hundred and sixty-four days of it, was
minutes away. He did not want to return to his stale exist-
ence. Did he have to ?

The faces were there again, smiling, and the girl was
holding out her hands to him. Like the woman on the moon-
cold sands. Briefly, behind their heads, he glimpsed an
ebony darkness scattered with still pin-points of light, then
it was gone.

His goggles were misting with sweat. The steering wheel
shook like a live thing in his hands. The car was going
faster, faster, and the brake didn’t respond. Fear constricted
his breathing. Everything beyond the car was a blur of grey.

The car slewed in the oil patch. His mind snapped like an

64

over-taut elastic band. He was spinning, falling, falling.

He saw the Lotus flipped on its back and slewing along
the track like an overturned beetle. He saw himself lying
prone, with people bending over him. The scene was shift-
ing, indistinct.

‘You can waken up, now.’ There was faint pressure on
his shoulder.

He felt very calm and rested. He opened his eyes. The
man and the girl were there, smiling. A second man, older,
in white, seemed to be pleased with his reaction, and he,
too, smiled.

Til leave you with him,’ the man in white said. ‘He’s
going to be all right. He’ll be able to understand what you
tell him. The sedative will ensure gradual return to total
awareness.’ He smiled again at Mark and went out.

‘I’m Ronnie,’ the young man said, ‘and this is Helen.’

‘Both of you are dead,’ Mark said, without alarm. ‘I’ve
seen the films of your deaths at the Society.’

‘You did see the films, Mark. But did you actually see me
fall down the mountain? Did you actually see Ronnie
bitten in half by the shark?’

Mark glanced at the girl. His mind refused to get agitated.
‘No . . . But, if you weren’t killed, what was the purpose of
the films?’

‘As you can see, we’re very much alive!’ Ronnie Said in
parenthesis, squeezing Helen’s hand. ‘The purpose was to
give an impression of death. Look.’

He stepped aside and Mark could see a screen on a wall.
Ronnie was swimming in green water. He wore a scuba suit
and carried a harpoon gun. The scene mixed to a shot of a
shark, cruising lazily. Then followed a sequence of Ronnie’s
fear-filled eyes, the shark’s teeth, Ronnie trying to fire the
harpoon, a flurry of bodies, man and shark, obscured by
sand stirred up from the sea bed, then fade-out.

‘A dummy took my place, thank goodness, in that final

65

shot, although I knew nothing about it at the time. I woke
up, just like you, in a room, such as this, to see people
whom I thought were dead.’

‘Now you’ll want to know why,’ Helen took up the
story. ‘We are part of a group deeply concerned about the
dominance of machines over our daily lives and what it is
doing to people, collectively and as individuals. Everything
is regulated. Invagination, initiative, curiosity, aggression :
all have been ground out of the human character, leaving
useless shells without drive or goal. Man has turned in on
himself and is on a downward path to stagnation and even-
tual extinction.’

‘We want to show you something,’ Ronnie said. ‘We can
talk as we go.’

Mark followed them into a long, brightly-lit corridor
with many doors leading off it. He was now wearing a light-
weight costume and soft shoes and he noticed that his
companions, and most of the people they passed, wore a
similar garment.

Helen carried on with her story. ‘Certain people in high
places decided that something must be done to salvage
something of man’s crushed spirit. Against opposition from
others who wanted to preserve the status quo, the Big Day
was started.’

They turned right into another corridor. Mark wondered
if the place was underground, but refrained from asking at
present.

The Big Day had a much deeper purpose than the relief
of frustration with society. The instigators wanted to find
people with guts, courage, a sense of adventure, as well as
the more obvious attributes of intelligence, and so on.
When someone had proved himself, he was "removed”, as
Ronnie puts it, from the rut, and brought here.’

“What if someone objected?’

‘Occasionally, that happens,’ Ronnie answered, ‘but, after

66

we’ve explained what we aim to do, they elect to stay.’

They entered a room. In one corner a group of men and
women were clustered around a blackboard, covered in
abstruse mathematical symbols. A window ran the full
length of the wall opposite the door.

Mark found himself looking out at a huge cavern. People
bustled about, on foot, or in small electric trucks, with an
air of planned activity. He caught his breath when he saw
the spaceships, one completed, the other evidently in the
last stages of construction.

‘We’re not going to attempt to change society here,’
Ronnie said. ‘We’re going to make a new start, on one of
the planets of Tau Ceti.’

‘Starships,’ Mark murmured, ‘not spaceships.’

‘Yes,’ Helen said. ‘There’s still much work to be done,
people to train, skills to learn. This is a kindergarten for a
new race of men and women. Out there, among the stars, is
the school. Will you join us?’

Mark smiled. Hand-in-hand, the three of them left the
room.

Down in the cavern, the starships awaited the Big Day.

67

MAJOR OPERATION
by

James White

Herewith the final Sector General story in this series
in which the patient awaiting surgery is over
£0,000 miles in diameter. Trevious stories in the
series can be found in New Writings In S-F Nos.
7, 12, 14, and 16.

MAJOR OPERATION

ONE

On the whole weird and wonderful planet there were only
thirty-seven patients requiring treatment, and they varied
widely both in size and in their degree of physical distress.
Naturally it was the patient in the greatest distress who was
being treated first, even though it was also the largest — so
large that at their scoutship’s sub-orbital velocity of six
thousand plus miles per hour it took just over nine minutes
to travel from one side of the patient to the other.

‘It’s a large problem,’ said Conway seriously, ‘and even
altitude doesn’t make it look smaller. Neither does the
shortage of skilled help.’

Pathologist Murchison, who was sharing the tiny obser-
vation blister with him, sounded cool and a little on the
defensive as she replied, ‘I have been studying all the
Drambon material long before and since my arrival two
months ago, but I agree that seeing it like this for the first
time really does bring the problem home to one. As for the
shortage of help, you must realise. Doctor, that you can’t
strip the hospital of its staff and facilities for just one
patient, even if it is the size of a sub-continent — there are
thousands of smaller and more easily curable patients with
equal demands on us. And if you are still suggesting that I,
personally, took my time in getting here,’ she ended hotly,
‘I came just as soon as my chief decided that you really did
need me, as a pathologist.’

71

‘I’ve been telling Thomnastor for six months that I
needed a top pathologist here/ said Conway gently. Mur-
chison looked beautiful when she was angry, but even
better when she was not. ‘I thought everybody in the hospi-
tal knew why I wanted you, which is one reason why we
are sharing this cramped observation blister, looking at a
view we have both seen many times on tape and arguing
when we could be enjoying some unprofessional behavi-
our ’

‘Pilot here,’ said a tinny voice in the blister’s speaker. ‘We
are losing height and circling back now and will land about
five miles east of the terminator. The reaction of the eye
plants to sunrise is worth seeing.’

‘Thank you,’ said Conway. To Murchison he added, ‘I
had not planned on looking out the window.’

‘I had,’ she said, punching him with one softly clenched
fist on the jaw. ‘You I can see anytime.’

Originally christened Meatball for obvious reasons,
Drambo — which was the natives’ own name for their
world — -^ad to be seen to be believed. Even then it had been
difficult for its discoverers, the crew of the cultural contact
and survey vessel Descartes, to believe what they were
seeing.

Drambo’s oceans were a thick, living soup and its rela-
tively small land masses were almost completely covered
by vast, slow-moving carpets of animal life. In many areas
there were outcroppings of rock and soil which supported
vegetation, and other forms of plant life flourished in the
oceans, on the sea bed or rooted itself to the organic ‘land’
surface. But the greater part of the planetary land surface
was covered by layers of an animal-vegetable life com-
posite which in some cases was nearly a mile thick.

This vast, organic carpet was subdivided into strata
which crawled and slipped and fought their way through
each other to gain access to necessary top-surface vegeta-

72

tion or subsurface minerals, or simply to choke off and
cannibalise each other. During the course of this slow, gar-
gantuan struggle these living strata heaved themselves into
hills and valleys, altering the shapes of lakes and coastlines
and changing the topography of their world from month to
month.

Evidence of two distinct and separate forms of intelligent
life on the planet was furnished almost at once. During the
first and very fleeting contact with the planetary surface,
when the ground had seemingly done its best to swallow
the ship in one gulp, Descartes had been penetrated by a
small, completely unspecialised and thought-controlled tool
far in advance of anything known to the Galactic Federa-
tion’s technology. And later in orbit the ship had been pres-
ent during the first manned space flight by a member of a
Drambon species who knew nothing at all about the tool or
its makers.

Recently they had made contact with other species living
inside the strata creatures, but the level of intelligence had
been too low for an interchange of concepts to take place —
they had been about half as bright as an Earth dog.

Somewhere in or under those vast strata creatures there
was a highly intelligent race whose land was sick and dying
all around them — ^at least, that had been Conway’s theory
up to now.

Murchison pointed suddenly and said, ‘Someone is draw-
ing a yellow triangle on your patient.’

Conway laughed. ‘I forgot, you haven’t been involved
with our communications problems so far. Most of the
surface vegetation is light-sensitive and, some of us thought,
may act as the creature’s eyes. We produce geometrical and
other figures by directing a narrow, intense beam of light
from orbit into a dark or twilight area and moving it about
quickly. The effect is something like that of drawing with a
high-persistency spot on a vision screen. So far there has

73

been no detectable reaction. It is possible,’ Conway added,
‘that the strata creature itself is intelligent.’

‘But you got a reaction once?’

‘Yes,’ Conway replied, ‘when we stood on the surface
while our ship did tight figure-of-eight turns above us. A
couple of tools turned up, you’ve seen the report. Probably
the creature can’t react even if it wanted to, because eyes
are sensory receptors and not transmitters. After all, we
can’t send messages with om eyes.’

‘Speak for yourself,’ said Murchison.

They landed shortly afterwards. Murchison and Conway
stepped carefully on to the springy ground, crushing several
of the vegetable eyes with every few yards of progress. The
fact that the patient had countless millions of other eyes did
not make them feel any better about the damage inflicted
by their feet.

When they were about fifty yards from the ship, Murchi-
son said suddenly, ‘If these plants are eyes, and it is a
natural assumption since they are sensitive to light, why
should it have so many in an area where danger threatens
so seldom? Peripheral vision to co-ordinate the activity of
its feeding mouths would be much more useful.’

Conway nodded. He knelt carefully among the plants
and Murchison followed suit. Their long shadows were
filled with the yellow of tightly-closed leaves. He indicated
their tracks from the entry lock of the ship, which were
also bright yellow, and moved his arms about so as to
partly obscure some of the plants from the light. Leaves
partially in shade or suffering even minor damage reacted
exactly as those completely cut off from the light. They
rolled up tight to display their yellow undersides.

The roots are thin and go on for ever,’ he said, excavat-
ing gently with his fingers to show a whitish root which
narrowed to the diameter of thin string before disappearing

74

from sight. ‘Even with mining equipment or during ex-
ploratories with diggers we haven’t been able to find the
other end of one. Have you learned anything new from the
internals?’

He covered the exposed root with soil, but kept the
palms of both hands pressed lightly against the ground.

Watching him, Murchison said, ‘Not very much. Light
and darkness, as well as causing the leaves to open out or
roll up tight, cause electro-chemical changes in the sap,
which is so heavily loaded with mineral salts that it forms a
very good conductor. Electrical pulses produced by these
changes could travel very quickly from the plant to the
other end of the root. Er, what are you doing. Doctor,
taking its pulse?’

Conway shook his head without speaking, and she went
on, ‘The eye plants are evenly distributed over the patient’s
top-surface, including those areas containing dense growths
of the air renewal and waste elimination types, so that a
shadow or light stimulus received anywhere on its surface
is transmitted quickly — almost instantaneously, in fact — to
the central nervous system via this mineral-rich sap. But the
thing which bothers me is what possible reason could the
creature have for evolving an eye-ball several hundred miles
across?’

‘Close your eyes,’ said Conway, smiling. ‘I’m going to
touch you. As accurately as you can, try to tell me where.’

‘You’ve been too long in the company of men and e-ts.
Doctor,’ Murchison began, then she broke off, looking
thoughtful, and did as she was told.

Conway began by touching her lightly on the face, then
he rested three fingers on top of her shoulder and went on
from there.

‘Left cheek about an inch from the left side of my
mouth,’ she said. ‘Now you’ve rested your hand on my
shoulder. You seem to be rubbing an X on to my left biceps.

75

Now you have a thumb and two, maybe three fingers at the

back of my neck just on the hairline Are you enjoying

this. Doctor? I am.’

Conway laughed. ‘1 might if it wasn’t for the thought of
Lieutenant Harrison watching us and steaming up the
pilot’s canopy with his hot little breath. But seriously, you
see what I’m getting at, that the eye plants have nothing to
do with the creature’s vision but are analogous to pressure,
pain, or temperature sensitive nerve endings?’

Murchison opened her eyes and nodded. ‘It’s a good
theory, but you don’t look happy about it.’

‘I’m not,’ said Conway sourly, ‘and I’d like you to shoot as
many holes in it as possible. You see, the complete success
of this operation depends on us being able to communicate
with the beings who produced the thought-controlled tools.
Up until now I had assumed that these beings would be
comparable in size to ourselves even if their physiological
classification would be completely alien and that they
would possess the usual sensory equipment of sight, hear-
ing, taste, touch, and be capable of being reached through
any or all of these channels. But now the evidence is piling
up in favour of a single intelligent life-form, the strata
creature itself, which is naturally deaf, dumb, and blind so
far as we can see. The problem of communicating even the
simplest concepts to it is ’

He broke off, all his attention concentrated on the palm
of one hand which was still pressed against the ground,
then said urgently, ‘Run for the ship.’

They were much less careful about stepping on plants on
the way back and as the hatch slammed shut behind them
Harrison’s voice rattled at them from the lock communi-
cator.

‘Are we expecting company?’

‘Yes, but not for a few minutes,’ said Conway breath-
lessly. ‘How much time do you need to get away, and can

76

we observe the tools’ arrival through something bigger than
this airlock port?’

‘For an emergency liftoff, two minutes,’ said the pilot,
'and if you come up to Control you can use the scanners
which check for external damage.’

‘But what were you doing, Doctor?’ Harrison resumed as
they entered his control position. ‘I mean, in my experience
the front of the biceps is not considered to be a zone of
erotic stimulation.’

When Conway did not answer he looked appealingly at
Murchison.

‘He was conducting an experiment,’ she said quietly, ‘de-
signed to prove that 1 cannot see with the nerve endings of
my upper arm. When we were interrupted he was proving
that 1 did not have eyes in the back of my neck, either.’

‘Ask a silly question . . .’ began Harrison.

‘Here they come,’ said Conway.

They were three semicircular discs of metal which
seemed to flicker into and out of existence on the area of
ground covered by the long morning shadow of the scout-
ship. Harrison stepped up the magnification of his scan-
ners, which showed that the objects did not so much appear
and disappear as shrink rhythmically into tiny metal blobs
a few inches across, then expand again into flat, circular
blades which knifed through the surface. There they lay flat
for a few seconds among the shadowed eye plants, then
suddenly the discs became shallow inverted bowls. The
change was so abrupt that they bounced several yards into
the air to land about twenty feet away. The process was
repeated every few seconds, with one disc bouncing rapidly
towards the distant tip of their shadow, the second zig-zag-
ging to chart its width and the third heading directly for the
ship.

‘I’ve never seen them act like that before,’ said the lieu-
tenant.

77

'We’ve made a long, thin itch,’ said Conway, ‘and they’ve
come to scratch it. Can we stay put for a few minutes?’

Harrison nodded, but said, ’Just remember that we’ll still
be staying put for two minutes after you change your
mind.’

The third disc was still coming at them in five-yard leaps
along the centre of their shadow. He had never before seen
them display such mobility and co-ordination, even though
he knew that they were capable of taking any shape their
operators thought at them, and that the complexity of the
shape and the speed of the change were controlled solely by
the speed and clarity of thought of the user’s mind.

At Sector General he had watched his friend Mannen per-
form incredible feats of surgery using one of these fabulous
tools — the one which had found its way aboard Descartes
during the first attempted landing. In his hands it had be-
come an all-purpose surgical instrument which took any
shape he desired, instantly. It had been that tool and the
possibility of obtaining more of them which had first
attracted the hospital and Conway to Drambo — but that, of
course, had been before they realised just how sick the sea-
rollers had made their planet.

’Lieutenant Harrison has a point. Doctor,’ said Murchison
suddenly. ’The early reports say that the tools were used to
undercut grounded ships so that they would fall inside the
strata creature, presumably for closer examination at its
leisure. On those occasions they tried to undercut the ob-
ject’s shadow, using the shaded eye plants as a guide to size
and position. But now, to use your own analogy, they seem
to have learned how to tell the itch from the object causing
it.’

A loud clang reverberated along the hull, signalling the
arrival of the first tool. Immediately the other two turned
and headed after the first and one after the other they
bounced high into the air, higher even than the control

78

position, to arch over and crash against the hull. The
damage scanners showed them strike, cling for a few
seconds while they spread over hull projections like thin,
metallic pancakes, then fall away. An instant later they
were clanging and clinging against a different section of
hull. But a few seconds later they stopped clinging because,
just before making contact, they grew needle points which
scored bright, deep scratches in the plating.

‘They must be blind,’ said Conway excitedly. The tools
must be an extension of the creature’s sense of touch, used
to augment the information supplied by the plants. They
are feeling us for size and shape and consistency.’

‘Before they discover that we have a soft centre,‘ said
Harrison firmly, ‘1 suggest that we make a tactical with-
drawal, or even get the Hell out.’

Conway nodded. While Harrison played silent tunes on
his control panels he explained to Murchison that the tools
were controllable by human minds up to a distance of
about twenty feet and that beyond this distance the tool-
users had control. He told her to think blunt shapes at them
as soon as they came into range, any shape so long as it did
not have points or cutting edges. . . .

‘No, wait,’ he said as a better idea struck him. Think
wide and flat at them, with an aerofoil section and some
kind of vertical projection for stabilisation and guidance.
Hold the shape while it is falling and glide it as far away
from the ship as possible. With luck it will need three or
four jumps to get back.’

Two

Their first attempt was not a success, although the shape
which finally struck the ship was too blunt and convoluted
to do serious damage. But they concentrated hard on the
next one, holding it to a triangle shape only a fraction of an

79

inch thick and with a wide central fin. Murchison held the
overall shape while Conway thought-warped the trailing
edges and stabiliser so that it performed a balanced vertical
bank just outside the direct vision panel and headed away
from the ship in a long, flat glide.

The glide continued long after it passed beyond their
range of influence, banking and wobbling a little, then cut-
ting a short swathe through the eye plants before touching
down.

‘Doctor, I could kiss you . . .’ began Murchison.

‘I know you like playing with girls and model aero-
planes, Doctor,’ Harrison broke in drily, ‘but we lift in
twenty seconds. Straps.’

‘It held that shape right to the end,’ Conway said, begin-
ning to worry for some reason. ‘Could it have been learning
from us, experimenting perhaps?’

He. stopped. The tool melted, flowed into the inverted
bowl shape and bounced high into the air. As it began to
fall back it changed into glider configuration, picking up
speed as it fell, then levelled out a few feet above the sur-
face and came sweeping towards them. The leading edges
of its wings were like razors. Its two companions were also
aloft in glider form, slicing the air towards them from the
other side of the ship.

‘Straps.’

They hit their acceleration couches just as the three fast-
gliding tools struck the hull, by accident or design cutting
off two of the external vision pickups. The one which was
still operating showed a three-foot gash torn in the thin
plating with a glider embedded in the tear, changing
shape, stretching and widening it. Probably it was a good
thing that they could not see what the other two were
doing.

Through the gash in the plating Conway could see
brightly coloured plumbing and cable runs which were also

8o

being pushed apart by the tool. Then that screen went dead
as well, just as takeoff boost rammed him deep into the
couch.

‘Doctor, check the stern for stowaways,’ said Harrison
harshly as the initial acceleration began to taper off. ‘If you
find any, think safe shapes at them — something which
won’t scramble any more of my wiring. Quickly.’

Conway had not realised the full extent of the damage,
only that there were more red lights than usual winking
from the control board. The pilot’s fingers were moving
over his panels with such an intensity of gentleness that the
harshness in his voice made it sound as if it was coming
from a completely different person.

‘The aft pickup,’ said Conway reassuringly, ‘shows all
three tools gliding in pursuit of our shadow.’

For a time there vvas silence broken only by the tuneless
whistling of air through torn plating and unretracted scan-
ner supports. The surface wobbled past below them and the
ship’s motion made Conway feel that it was at sea rather
than in the air. Their problem was to maintain height at a
very low flying speed, because to increase speed would
cause damaged sections of the hull to peel off or heat up
due to atmospheric friction, or increase the drag to such an
extent that the ship would not fly at all. For a vessel which
was classed as a supersonic glider for operations in atmo-
sphere their present low speed was ridiculous. Harrison
must be holding on to the sky with his fingernails.

Conway tried hard to forget the Lieutenant’s problems
by worrying aloud about his own.

‘I think this proves conclusively that the strata creatures
are our intelligent tool-users,’ he said to Murchison. ‘The
high degree of mobility and adaptability shown by the tools
makes that very plain. They must be controlled by a diffuse
and not very strong field of mental radiation conducted and
transmitted by root networks and extending only a short

8i

distance above the surface. It is so weak that an average
Earth-human or e-t mind can take local control.

‘If the tool-users were beings of comparable size and>
mental ability to ourselves,’ he went on, trying not to look
at the landscape lurching past below them, ‘they would
have to travel under and through the surface material as
quickly as the tools were flying over it if they were to
maintain control. To burrow at that speed would require
them being encased in a self-propelled armour-piercing
shell. But this does not explain why they have ignored our
attempts at making wide-range contact through remote
control devices, other than by reducing the communication
modules to their component pieces ’

‘If the range of mental influence pervades its whole
body,’ Murchison broke in, ‘would that mean that the
creature’s brain is also diffuse? Or, if it does have a local-
ised brain, where is it?’

‘I favour the idea of a centralised nervous system,’ Con-
way replied, ‘in a safe and naturally well-protected area —
probably close to the creature’s underside where there is a
plentiful supply of minerals and possibly in a natural hol-
low in the subsurface rock. Eye plant and similar types of
internal root networks which you’ve analysed tend to be-
come more complex and extensive the closer we go to the
'subsurface, which could mean that the pressure-sensitive
network there is augmented by the electro-vegetable system
which causes muscular movement as well as the other
types whose function and purpose are still unknown to us.
Admittedly the nervous system is largely vegetable, but the
mineral content of the root systems means that electro-
chemical reactions generated at any nerve ending will trans-
mit impulses to the brain very quickly, so there is prob-
ably only one brain and it could be situated anywhere.’

Murchison shook her head. ‘In a being the size of a sub-
continent, with no detectable skeleton or osseous structure

82

to form a protective casing and ^vhose body, relative to its
area, resembles a thin carpet I think more than one would
be needed — one central brain, anyway, plus a number of
neutral sub-stations. But the thing which really worries me
is what do we do if the brain happens to be in or danger-
ously close to the operative field.’

‘One thing we can’t do,’ Conway replied grimly, ‘is delay
the op. Your reports make that very clear.’

Murchison nodded. She had not been wasting time since
coming to Drambo and, as a result of her analysis of
thousands of specimens taken by test bores, diggers, and
exploring medics from all areas and levels of its far-flung
body, she was able to give an accurate if not completely
detailed picture of the creature’s current physiological
state.

They already knew that the metabolism of the strata
creature was extremely slow and that its muscular re-
actions were closer to those of a vegetable than an animal.
Voluntary and involuntary muscles controlling mobility,
ingestion, and digestion, circulation of its working fluid,
and the breaking down of waste products were all governed
or initiated by the secretions of specialised plants. But it
was the plants comprising the patient’s nervous system
with their extensive root networks which had suffered
worst in the roller fallout, because they had allowed the
surface radioactivity to penetrate deep inside the strata
creature. This had killed many plant species and had also
caused the deaths of thousands of internal animal organ-
isms whose purpose it was to control the growth of various
forms of specialised vegetation.

There were two distinct types of internal organisms and
they took their jobs very seriously. The large-headed farmer
fish were responsible for cultivating and protecting benign
growth and destroying all others — for such a large creature,

83

the patient’s metabolic balance was remarkably delicate.
The second type, which were the being’s equivalent of
leucocytes, assisted the farmer fish in plant control, and
directly if one of the fish became injured or unwell. They
were also cursed with the tidy habit of eating or otherwise
absorbing dead members of their own or the fish species, so
that a very small quantity of radioactive material intro-
duced by the roots of surface plants could be responsible
for killing a very large number of leucocytes, one after
another.

So the dead areas which had spread far beyond the
regions directly affected by roller fallout were caused, by
the uncontrolled proliferation of malignant plant-life. The
process, like decomposition, was irreversible. The urgent
surgical removal of the affected areas was the only solution.

But the report had been encouraging in some respects.
Minor surgery had already been performed in a number of
areas to check on the probable ecological effects of dump-
ing large masses of decomposing animo-vegetable material
on the sea or adjacent living strata creature and to devise
methods of radioactive decontamination on a large scale. It
had been found that the patient would heal, but slowly;
that if the incision was widened to a trench one hundred
feet across then the uncontrolled growth in the excised
section would not spread to infect the living area, although
regular patrols of the incision to make absolutely sure of
this were recommended. The decomposition problem was
no problem at all — the explosive growth rate continued
until the plant-life concerned used up the available material
and died. On land the residue would subside into a very rich
loam and make an ideal site for a self-supporting base if
medical observers were needed in the years to come. In the
case of material sliding off shelving coastlines into the sea,
it simply broke up and drifted to the seabed to form an
edible carpet for the rollers.

84

Certain areas could not be treated surgically, of course,
for the same reason that Shylock had to forego his pound of
flesh. These were relatively small trouble spots far inland,
whose condition was analogous to a severe skin cancer, but
limited surgery and incredibly massive doses of medication
were beginning to show results.

‘But I still don’t understand its hostility towards us,’
Murchison said nervously as the ship went into a three-
dimensional skid and lost a lot of height. ‘After all, it
can’t possibly know enough about us to hate us like
that.’

The ship was passing over a dead area where the eye
plants were discoloured and lifeless and did not react to
their shadow. Conway wondered if the vast creature could
feel pain or if there was simply a loss of sensation when
parts of it died. In every other life-form he had ever en-
countered, and he had met some really weird ones at Sector
General, survival was pleasure and death brought pain —
that was how evolution kept a race from just lying down
and dying when the going got tough. So the strata creature
almost certainly had felt pain, intense pain over hundreds
of square miles, when the rollers had detonated their nu-
clear weapons. It had felt more than enough pain to drive it
mad with hatred.

Conway cringed inwardly at the thought of such vast
and unimaginable pain. Several things were becoming very
clear to him.

‘You’re right,’ he said. ‘They don’t know anything at all
about us, but they hate our shadows. This one in particular
hates them because the aircraft carrying the sea-rollers’
atomic bombs produced a shadow not unlike ours just be-
fore large tracts of the patient’s body were fried and irradi-
ated.’

‘We land in four minutes,’ said Harrison suddenly. ‘On
the coast. I’m afraid, because this bucket has too many

85

holes in it to float. Descartes has us in sight and will send a
copter,’

The pilot’s face made Conway fight the urge to laugh. It
looked like that of a half made-up clown. Furious concen-
tration had drawn Harrison’s brows into a ridiculous
scowl while his lower lip, which he had been chewing
steadily since takeoff, was a wide, blood-red bow of good
humour.

Conway said. The tools can’t operate in this area and,
except for a little background radiation caused by fallout,
there is no danger. You can land safely.’

‘Your trust in my professional ability,’ said the pilot, ‘is
touching.’

From their condition of unlevel flight they curved into a
barely controlled, tail-first dive. The surface crept, then
rushed up at them. Harrison checked the rush with full
emergency thrust. There were metallic tearing noises and
the rest of the lights on his board turned red.

‘Harrison, pieces of you are dropping off ’ began Des-

cartes radioman, then they touched down.

For days afterwards the observers argued about it, trying
to decide whether it had been a landing or a crash. The
shock absorber legs buckled, the stern section took some
more of the shock as it tried to telescope amidships and the
acceleration couches took the rest — even when the ship
toppled, crashed on to its side and a broad, flickering wedge
of daylight appeared in the plating a few feet away. The
rescue copter was almost on top of them.

‘Everybody out,’ said Harrison. ‘The pile shielding has
been damaged.’

Looking at the dead and discoloured surface around
them, Conway thought again of his patient. Angrily, he
said, ‘A little more radiation hereabout won’t make much
difference.’

To your patient, no,’ said the lieutenant urgently. ‘But,

86

perhaps selfishly, I was thinking of my future offspring.
After you.’

During the short trip to the mother ship Conway stared
silently out of the port beside him and tried hard not to feel
frightened and inadequate. His fear was due to reaction
after what could easily have been a fatal crash plus the
thought of an even more dangerous trip he would have to
make in a few days time, and any doctor with a patient
who stretched beyond the limits of visibility in all direc-
tions could not help feeling small. He was a single microbe
trying to cure the body containing it, and suddenly he
longed for the normal doctor-patient relationships of his
hospital — even though very few of his patients or col-
leagues could be considered normal.

Sector General was a multi-environmental hospital, a
vast, complex fabrication of metal which hung in space like
a man-made moon. Inside its three hundred and eighty-four
levels were reproduced the environments of all the intelli-
gent life-forms known to the Galactic Federation, a bio-
logical spectrum ranging from the ultra-frigid methane
species through the more normal oxygen- and chlorine-
breathing types up to the exotic beings who existed by the
direct conversion of hard radiation. And in addition to the
patients, whose number and physiological classification
were a constant variable, there was a medical and main-
tenance staff which was composed of sixty-odd differing
life-forms with sixty different sets of mannerisms, body
odours and ways of looking at life.

The medical staff of Sector General was an extremely
able, dedicated, but not always serious group of people who
were fanatically tolerant of all forms of intelligent life —
had this not been so they could never have served in a multi-
environment hospital in the first place. They prided them-
selves that no case was-too big, too small, or too hopeless,

87

and their professional reputation and facilities were second
to none. But until now they had never been faced with a
patient the size of a sub-continent, a case which might well
be both too big and too hopeless.

Even if the hospital could have been moved into a close
orbit around Drambo and each member of its medical staff
assigned to this one patient, it still would not have been
enough. He needed a veritable army of medics to treat this
one. Instead he had a few hundred doctors and an army, if
only he could find a way of using it medically instead of
tactically.

He sometimes wondered if it might not be better to have
sent a general to medical school than to give a doctor con-
trol of a whole sector sub-fleet.

Three

Only six of the Monitor Corps heavies were grounded on
Drambo, their landing legs planted firmly in the shallows a
few miles off one of the dead sections of coastline. The
others filled the morning and evening sky like regimented
stars. His medical teams were grouped in and around the
grounded ships, which rose out of the thick, soupy sea-like
grey beehives. The Earth-humans like himself lived on
board while the e-ts, none of whom breathed air, were quite
happy roughing it on the sea bed. For them Drambo was a
home from home, an improvement over conditions on their
worlds of Hudlar, Melf, and Chalderescol. He also had the
support — moral rather than physical — given by the rollers
who were much more vulnerable on their own home planet
than were any of the e-ts.

He had called what he hoped would be the final pre-op
meeting in the cargo hold of Descartes, which was filled
with Drambon sea water whose content of animal and
plant life had been filtered out so' that the beam of the

88

projector would have a sporting chance of fighting its way
to the screen attached to the forward bulkheads.

Protocol demanded that the Drambons present opened
the proceedings. Watching their spokesman, Surreshun, roll-
ing like a great flaccid doughnut around the clear space in
the centre of the deck, Conway wondered once again how
such a ridiculously vulnerable species had been able to sur-
vive and evolve a highly complex, technology-based cul-
ture — though it was just possible that an intelligent dino-
saur would have had similar thoughts about early Man.

Surreshun belonged to a species which did not possess a
heart or, indeed, any other form of muscular pump to cir-
culate its blood. Physically it resembled a large, fleshy
doughnut which rolled continually because to stop rolling
was to die — its ring-like body circulated while its blood,
operating on a form of gravity feed system, remained still.
Even the simplest form of medical treatment or surgery on
a Drambon necessitated the doctor and the entire theatre
staff with their instruments and lighting being attached to
an elaborate ferris wheel and rotating with their patient.

Surreshun was followed by Garoth, the Hudlar Senior
Physician who was in charge of the patient’s medical treat-
ment. Hudlar was a high-gravity world whose natives
absorbed their food directly from the thick, soup-like air.
Unlike Surreshun, Garoth was invulnerable to practically
everything. It was quite happy on Drambo, the sea was
thick with food, the light gravity made it feel frisky and its
armour-plated hide allowed it to ignore everything in the
way of animal and vegetable nastiness that the planet could
throw up. Garoth’s chief concern was with the devising and
implementation of artificial feeding in areas where incisions
would cut the throat tunnels between the coastal mouths
and the inland pre-stomachs. Again unlike Surreshun, it did
not say very much, but let the projector do all the talking.

The big screen was filled by a picture of an auxiliary

89

mouth shaft situated about two miles inland of the planned
incision line. Every few minutes a copter or small supply
ship grounded beside the shaft, discharged its load of
freshly dead animal life from the coastal shallows and de-
parted, while Corpsmen with loaders and earth-moving
machinery pushed the food over the lip. Possibly the
amount and quality of the food was less than that which
was drawn in naturally, but when the throat was sealed
during the major operation this would be the only way that
large areas of the patient could be supplied with food.

Aseptic procedures were impossible in an operation on
this scale so that pumping equipment drawing sea water
from the coast was drawn through large-diameter plastic
piping. It poured in a steady stream — except when tools cut
the pipeline — into the food shaft, supplying the strata
creature with needed working fluid and at the same time
wetting the waills so that leucocytes could be slipped down
from time to time to combat the effects of any dangerous
plant life which might have been introduced during feed-
ing.

They were seeing a drill, of course, performed at one of
the feeding installations a few days earlier, but there were
more than fifty auxiliary mouths in a similar state of
readiness strung out along the proposed incision line.

Suddenly there was a silvery blur of motion on the
ground beside the pump housing and a Corpsman hopped a
few yards on one foot before falling to the ground. His boot
with his other foot still in it lay on its side where he had
been standing and the tool, no longer silvery, was already
cutting its way beneath the blood-splashed surface.

Tool attacks are increasing in frequency and strength,’
said Garoth in Translated, and necessarily emotionless,
tones. They are also displaying considerable initiative.
Your idea of clearing an area around the feeding installa-
tions of all eye plants so that the tools would have to

90

operate blind, and would have to bounce around feeling for
targets, worked only for a short time. Doctor. They devised
a new trick, that of sliding along a few inches below the
surface, blind, of course, then suddenly extruding a point or
a cutting blade and stabbing or swinging with it before re-
treating under the surface again. If we can’t see them,
mental control is impossible, and guarding every working
Corpsman with another carrying a metal detector has not
worked very well so far — it has simply given the tool a
better chance of hitting someone.

‘And just recently,’ Garoth concluded, ‘there are indica-
tions of the tools linking up into five, six, and in one case
ten-unit combinations. The Corpsman who reported this
died a few seconds later, before he was able to finish his
report. The condition of his vehicle supports this theory,
however.’

Conway nodded grimly and said, ‘Thank you. Doctor.
But now I’m afraid that you’ll have to withstand air attacks
as well. On the way here we taught the patient how gliders
work, and it learned fast. . . .’ He went on to describe the
incident, adding Murchison’s latest pathological findings
and their deductions and theories on the nature of their
patient. As a result the meeting quickly became a debate
and was degenerating into a bitter argument before he had
to pull rank and get his human and e-t doctors back to a
state of clinical detachment.

The heads of the Melfan and Chalder teams made their
report practically as a duet. Although not as naturally well-
protected as the Hudlars, the crab-like, water-breathing
Melfans had the mobility to out-run anything they were
unable to fight. The Chalder Senior Physician who was
floating near the roof of the hold like a forty-foot night-
mare of teeth, talons, and tentacles had rarely been called
on to use its natural weaponry, because the mere sight of
one was usually enough to frighten off anything or anyone

91

ignorant of the fact that they were members of one of the
most intelligent and sensitive species in the Federation.

Like Garoth they had both been concerned with the non-
surgical aspects of the patient’s treatment. To a hypotheti-
cal observer ignorant of the true scope of their problem,
this medical treatment could have been mistaken for a very
widespread mining operation, agriculture on an even larger
scale and mass kidnapping. Both were strongly convinced,
and Conway agreed with them, that the wrong way to
treat a skin cancer was by amputation of the affected
limb.

The amounts of radioactive material deposited by fallout
in the central areas were relatively small, and their effects
spread fairly slowly into the depths of the patient’s body.
But even this condition would be ultimately fatal if some-
thing was not done to cheek it and, since the areas affected
by light fallout were too numerous and occurred in too
many inoperable locations, they had skinned off the
poisoned surface with earth-moving machinery and pushed
it into heaps for later decontamination. The remainder of
the treatment involved helping the patient to help itself.

A picture appeared suddenly on the screen of a section of
subsurface tunnel under one of the areas affected by fallout.
There were dozens of life-forms in the tunnel, most of them
farmer fish with stubby arms sprouting from the base of
their enlarged heads while the others drifted or undulated
towards the observer’s position like great, transparent slugs.

For a living section of the strata creature it looked none
too healthy. The farmer fish, whose function was the cul-
tivation and control of internal plant life, moved slowly,
bumping into each other and the leucocytes which, nor-
mally transparent, were displaying the milky coloration
which occurred shortly before death. The radiation sensor
readings left no doubt as to what they were dying from.

These specimens were rescued shortly afterwards,’ said

92

the Chalder, ‘and transferred to sick-bays in the larger ships
and to Sector General. Both fish and leeches respond to the
same decontamination and regeneration treatments given
to our own people who have been exposed to a radiation
overdose. They were then returned to carry on their good
work.’

‘That being,’ the Melfan joined in, ‘absorbing the radia-
tion from the nearest poisoned plant or fish and getting
themselves sick again.’

O’Mara had accused Conway of treating Sector General
like some kind of e-t sausage machine, although the hospital
was curing everything Drambon that they possibly could,
and the Monitor Corps medics had merely looked long-
suffering when they weren’t looking extremely busy.

By themselves neither the hospital nor treatment facili-
ties on the capital ships were enough to swing the balance.
To allow the patient to fight these local infections properly
it required massive transfusions of the leucocyte life-form
from other, and healthier, strata creatures.

When he had first suggested the transfusion idea Conway
had been worried in case the patient would reject what
were, in effect, another creature’s antibodies. But this had
not happened, and the only problems encountered were
those of transportation and supply as the first single, care-
fully selected kidnappings became continual wholesale
abduction.

On the screen appeared a sequehce showing one of the
special commandos withdrawing leucocytes from a small
and disgustingly healthy strata creature on the other side of
the planet. The entry shaft had been in use for several
weeks and the motion of the strata creature had caused it to
bend in several places, but it was still usable. The corpsmen
dropped from the copters and into the sloping tunnel, run-
ning and occasionally ducking to avoid the lifting gear

93

which would later haul their catch to the surface. They
wore lightweight suits and carried only nets. The leucocytes
were their friends. It was very important for them to re-
member that.

The leucocytes possessed a highly developed empathic
faculty which allowed them to distinguish the parent
body’s friends from its foes simply by monitoring their
emotional radiation. Provided the Corpsmen kidnappers
thought warm, friendly thoughts while they went about
their business, they were perfectly safe. But it was hard and
often frustrating work, netting and hauling and transferring
the massive and inert slugs into the transport copters.
Sweating and short-tempered as they frequently were, it
was not easy to radiate feelings of friendship and helpful-
ness towards their charges. Circumstances arose in which a
Corpsman gave way to a flash of anger or irritation — at an
item of his own equipment, perhaps — and for such lapses
many of them died.

Rarely did they die singly. At the end of the sequence
Conway watched the entire crew of a transport copter
taken out within a few minutes, because it was next to
impossible for a man to think kindly thoughts towards a
being who had just killed a crew-mate — ^by injecting a
poison which triggered off muscular spasms so violent that
the man broke practically every bone in his body — even if
his own life did depend on it. There was no protection and
no cure. Heavy duty spacesuits tough enough to resist the
needle points of the leeches’ probes would not have allowed
enough mobility for the Corpsmen to do their job, and the
creatures killed just as quickly and thoroughly and unthink-
ingly as they cured.

‘To summarise,’ said the Chalder as it blanked the screen,
‘the transfusion and artificial feeding operations are going
well at present, but if casualties continue to mount at this
rate the supply will fall dangerously short of the computed

94

demand. I therefore recommend, most strongly, that sur-
gery be commenced immediately.’

‘I agree,’ added the Melfan. ‘Assuming that we must pro-
ceed without either the consent or co-operation of the
patient, we should start immediately.’

'How immediate?’ broke in Captain Williamson, speak-
ing for the first time. ‘It takes time to deploy a whole sector
sub-fleet over the operative field. My people will need final
briefings and, well, I think the Fleet Commander is a little
worried about this one. Up to now his operations have been
purely military.’

Conway was silent, trying to force himself to the de-
cision he had been avoiding for several weeks. Once he gave
the word to start, once he began cutting on this gargantuan
scale, he was committed. There would be no chance to
withdraw and try again later, there were no specialists that
he could fall back on if the going got too tough and, worst
of all, there was no time for dithering because already the
patient’s condition had been left untreated for far too
long.

‘Don’t worry. Captain,’ said Conway, trying hard to
radiate the confidence and reassurance which he did not
feel. ‘So far as your people are concerned, this has become a
military operation. I know that in the beginning you
treated it as a disaster relief exercise on an unusually large
scale, but now it has become indistinguishable from war in
your minds, because in war you have to expect heavy
casualties. I’m very sorry about that, sir. I never expected
such heavy losses and I’m personally very sorry that I
taught those tools to glide this morning, because that stunt
will cost a lot more . , .’

‘It couldn’t be helped. Doctor,’ Williamson broke in, ‘and
one of our people was bound to think of the same idea
some time — they’ve thought of practically everything else.
But what I want to know is ’

95

‘How soon is immediately,’ said Conway for him. ‘Well,
bearing in mind the fact that the operation will be
measured in weeks rather than hours and provided there
are no logistical reasons for holding back, 1 suggest we start
the job at first light on the day after tomorrow.’

Williamson nodded, but hesitated before he spoke. ‘We
can be in position at that time. Doctor, but something else
has just come up which may cause you to change your
mind about the timing.’

He gestured towards the screen and went on, ‘1 can show
you charts and figures, if you like, but it is quicker to tell
you the results first. The survey of healthy and less ill strata
creatures which you asked our cultural contact people to
carry out — your idea being that it might be easier to estab-
lish communications with a being who was not in constant
pain than otherwise — is now complete. Altogether eighteen
hundred and seventy-four sites covering every known strata
creature were visited, a tool left unattended on the surface
and kept under observation from a distance for periods of
up to six hours. Even though the body material was practi-
cally identical with that of our patient, including the pres-
ence of a somewhat simplified form of eye plant, the results
were completely negative. The strata creatures under test
made no attempt to control or change the tools in any way,
and the small changes which did occur were directly trace-
able to mental radiation from birds or non-intelligent sur-
face animals. We fed this data to Descartes’ computer and
then to the tactical computer on Vespasian. The conclusions
left no doubt at all. I’m afraid. There is only one intelligent
strata creature on Drambo,’ Williamson ended grimly, ‘and
it is our patient.’

Conway did not reply at once and the meeting became
more and more disorganised. To begin with there were a
few useful ideas put up — at least they sounded good until

96

the Captain shot them down. But then instead of ideas he
got senseless arguments and bad temper and suddenly Con-
way knew why.

They had all been both overworked and overtired when
the meeting had started, and that had been five hours ago.
The Melfan’s bony underside was sagging to within a few
inches of the deck, the Hudlar was probably hungry be-
cause the water inside the hold had been cleared of all
edible material as had the floor, which would similarly dis-
please the constantly rolling Drambon. Above them the
enormous Chalder had been hanging in a cramped position
for far too long, and Murchison and the Captain must have
been finding their pressure suits as irksome as Conway was
finding his. It was obvious that there would be no more
useful contributions from anyone at this meeting, including
himself, and it was time to wind it up.

He signalled for silence, then said, ‘Thank you, everyone.
The news that our patient is the planet’s only intelligent
strata creature makes it necessary for us to try even harder,
if that is possible, to make the forthcoming operation a
success. It is not a valid reason for delaying surgery. You
will all have plenty to occupy you tomorrow,’ he ended. ‘I
shall spend the time making one last try at obtaining the
consent and co-operation of our patient.’

Four

That night Conway fell asleep before he had a chance to do
any serious worrying, so that he felt fresh and reasonably
confident as they climbed into the special digger next morn-
ing. Modifications had been completed to a pair of the
tracked boring machines just three days earlier, making
them as tool-proof as possible and extending their two-way
vision equipment to allow Conway to view and, if neces-
sary, direct the operation from anywhere on or inside the

97

strata creature. It was the communications gear that he
checked first.

‘I have no intention of becoming a dead hero,’ Conway
explained, grinning. ‘If we are in any danger I shall be the
first to scream for help.’

Harrison shook his head. ‘The second.’

‘Ladies first,’ said Murchison firmly.

They drove inland to a healthy area thickly covered by
eye plants and stopped for a full hour, then moved on for
an hour and stopped again. They spent the morning and
early afternoon moving and stopping with no discernible
reaction from the patient. Sometimes they drove around in
tight circles in an attempt to attract attention, still without
success. Not a single tool appeared. Their ground sensors
gave no sign that anything was trying to undercut them.
Altogether it was turning out to be an intensely frustrating
if physically restful day.

When darkness fell they switched on the digger’s spot-
lights and played them around and watched thousands of
eye plants open and close suddenly to this artificial sun-
shine, but still the strata creature refused the bait.

‘In the beginning the brute must have been curious about
us,’ said ConWay, ‘and anxious to investigate any strange
object or occurrence. Now it is simply frightened and
hostile, and there are much better targets elsewhere.’

The digger’s vision screens showed several transfusion
and feeding sites under constant tool attack, and too many
dark stains on the ground which were not of oil.

‘I still think,’ said Conway seriously, ‘that if we could get
close to its brain, or even into the area where the tools are
produced, we would stand a better chance of communicat-
ing directly. If direct communication is impossible we
might be able to stimulate certain sections artificially to
make it think that large objects had landed on the surface,
forcing it to draw off the tools attacking the transfusion

98

installations. Or if we could gain an understanding of its
technology that might give us a lever . .

He broke off as Murchison shook her head. She produced
a chart comprising thirty or more transparent overlays
which showed the patient’s interior layout as accurately as
six months hard work with insufficient facilities could
make it. Her features fell into its lecturing expression, the
one which said that she wanted attention but not admira-
tion.

She said, ‘We have already tried to find the patient’s
brain location by backtracking along the nerve paths, that
is the network of rootlets containing metallic salts which
are capable of carrying electro-chemical impulses. Using
test bores taken at random on the top surface and by direct
observation from diggers, we found that they link up, not
to a central brain but to a flat layer of similar rootlets lying
just above the subsurface. They do not join directly on to
this new network, but lie alongside, parallelling it close
enough for impulses to be passed across by induction.

‘Some of this network is probably responsible for the
subsurface muscular contractions which gave the patient
mobility before it took over this particular land mass and
stopped climbing over and smothering its enemies, and it is
natural to assume that the eye plants above and the muscles
below have a direct connection since they would give the
first warning of another strata creature attempting to slip
over this one, and the subsequent muscular reaction would
be almost involuntary.

‘But there are many other root networks in that layer,’
she went on, ‘whose function we do not know. They are
not colour coded. Doctor — they all look exactly the same
except for minute variations in thickness. The t)q)e which
apparently abstracts minerals from the subsurface rock can
vary in thickness. So I would advise against artificial stimu-
lation of any kind. You could very easily start a bunch of

99

subsurface muscles twitching, and the Corpsmen up top
would have localised earthquakes to contend with as well as
everything else.’

‘All right,’ said Conway, irked for no other reason than
that her objections were valid. ‘But I still want to get close
to its brain or to the tool-producing area, and if it won’t
pull us in we must go looking for it. But we’re running out
of time. Where, in your opinion, is the best place to look?’

Murchison was thoughtful for a moment, then said,
‘Either the brain or the tool-producing area could be in a
hollow or small valley in the subsurface where, presum-
ably, the creature absorbs necessary minerals. There is a
large, rocky hollow fifteen miles away, just here, which
would give the necessary protection from below and from
all sides while the mass of the overlaying body would save
it from injury from above. But there are dozens of other
sites just as good. Oh, yes, there would have to be a con-
stant supply of nutriment and oxygen available, but as this
is a quasi-vegetable process in the patient with water in-
stead of blood as the working fluid, there should be no
problem in supplying a deeply-buried brain. . . .’

She broke off, her face and jaw stiffening in a successfully
stifled yawn. Before she could go on, Conway said, ‘It’s
quite a problem. Why don’t you sleep on it?’

Suddenly she laughed. ‘1 am. Hadn’t you noticed?’

Conway smiled and said, ‘Seriously, 1 would like to call a
copter to pick you up before we go under. I’ve no idea
what to expect if we do find what we’re looking for — we
might find ourselves caught in an underground blast fur-
nace or paralysed by the brain’s mental radiation. I realise
that your curiosity is strong and entirely professional, but I
would much prefer that you didn’t come. After all, scien-
tific curiosity kills more cats than any other kind.’

‘With respect. Doctor,’ said Murchison, showing very
little of it, ‘you are talking rubbish. There have been no

too

indications of unusually high temperatures on the subsur-
face, and we both know that while some e-ts communicate
telepathically, they can only do so among their own
species. The tools are an entirely different matter, an inert

but thought-malleable fabrication which ' She broke

off, took a deep breath, and ended quietly. There is another
digger just like this one. I’m sure there would also be an
officer and gentleman on Descartes willing to trail you in
it.’

Harrison sighed loudly and said, ‘Don’t be antisocial.
Doctor. If you can’t beat ’em, let them join you.’

‘I’ll drive for a while,’ said Conway, treating incipient
mutiny in the only way he could in the circumstances, by
ignoring it. ‘I’m hungry, and it’s your turn to dish up.’

‘I’ll help you. Lieutenant,’ said Murchison.

As Harrison turned over the driving position to Conway
and headed for the galley, he muttered, ‘You know. Doctor,
sometimes I enjoy slavering over a hot dish, especially
yours.’

It was shortly before midnight that they reached the area
of the subsurface depression, nosed over, and bored in.
Murchison stared through the direct vision port beside her,
occasionally making notes about the tracery of fine roots
which ran through the damp, cork-like material which was
the flesh of the strata creature. There was no indication of a
conventional blood supply, nothing to show that the crea-
ture had ever been alive in the animal rather than the
vegetable sense.

Suddenly they broke through the roof of a stomach and
drifted down between the great vegetable pillars which
raised and lowered the roof, drawing food-bearing water
from the sea and expelling, many days later, the waste
material not already absorbed by specialist plants. The
vegetable stalactites stretched away to the limits of the

lOI

spotlight in all directions, each one covered with the other
specialised growths whose secretions caused the pillars to
stiffen when the stomach had been empty for too long and
relax when it was full. Other caverns, smaller and spaced
closer together than the stomachs, simply kept the water
flowing in the system without performing any digestive
function.

Just before they drifted to the floor Harrison angled the
digger into diving position and spun the forward cutters to
maximum speed. They struck the stomach floor softly and
kept on going. Half an hour later they were thrown for-
ward against their straps. The soft thudding of the cutter
blades had risen to an ear-piercing shriek, which died into
silence as Harrison switched them off.

‘Either we’ve reached the subsurface,’ he said drily, ‘or
this beastie has a very hard heart.’

They withdrew a short distance, then flattened their
angle of descent so that they could continue tunnelling with
their tracks rolling over the rocky subsurface and the cut-
ters chewing through material which now had the appear-
ance of heavily compressed and thickly-veined cork. When
they had gone a few hundred yards Conway signalled the
Lieutenant to stop.

‘This doesn’t look like the stuff that brains are made of,’
Conway said to Murchison, ‘but 1 suppose we should take a
closer look.’

They were able to collect a few specimens and to look
closely, but not for long. By the time they had sealed their
suits and exited through the rear hatch, the tunnel they had
made was already sagging dangerously and, v/here the wet,
gritty floor met the tunnel sides, an oily black liquid oozed
out and climbed steadily until it was over their ankles.
Conway did not want to take too much of the stuff back
with them into the digger. From the earlier samples taken
by drill they knew that it stank to high Heaven.

102

When they were back inside Murchison lifted one of the
specimens. It looked a little like an Earthly onion which
had been cut laterally in two. The flat underside was
covered by a pad of stubby, worm-like growths and the
single stalk divided and subdivided many times before join-
ing the nerve network a short distance above them. She
said, ‘I would say that the plant’s secretions dissolve and
absorb minerals and/or chemicals from the subsurface rock
and soil and, with the water which filters down here, pro-
vides the lubrication which allows the creature to change
position if the mineral supply runs out. But there are no
signs of unusual or concfentrated nerve networks here, nor
are there any traces of the scars which tools leave when
they cut their way through this material. I’m afraid we’ll
have to try again somewhere else.’

Nearly an hour went by before they reached the second
hollow and another three took them to the third. Conway
had been a little doubtful from the beginning about the
third site because it was too close to the periphery, in his
opinion, to house'a brain, but Murchison had still not ruled
out the possibility, on a creature this size, of multiple brains
or at least a number of neural substations. She reminded
him that the old-time brontosaurus had needed two, and it
had been microscopic when compared with their patient.

The third site was also very close to the beginning of the
first incision line.

‘We could spend the rest of our lives searching hollows
and still not find what we’re looking for,’ said Conway
angrily, ‘and we haven’t that much time.’

His repeater screens showed the sky lightening far above
them, with Monitor heavy cruisers already in position,
floodlights being switched off at transfusion and feeding
installations and occasionally glimpses of his friend Major
Edwards, the medical ofiicer from Descartes who had been
transferred to the flagship Vespasian as medical liaison

103

chief for the duration. It was Edwards’ job to translate
Conway’s medical instructions into military manoeuvres
for the fleet’s executive officers.

‘Your test bores,’ said Conway suddenly. ‘I assume they
were spaced out at regular intervals and went right down to
the subsurface? Was there any indication that the black
goo which the patient uses as a lubricant is more prevalent
in certain areas than in others ? I’m trying to find a section
of the creature which is virtually incapable of movement,
because ’

‘Of course,’ said Murchison excitedly, ‘that is the big
factor which makes our intelligent patient different from
all the smaller and non-intelligent strata creatures. For
better protection the brain, and probably the tool produc-
tions centres, would almost certainly have to be in a
stationary section. Off-hand 1 can only remember about a
dozen test bores in which lubricant was absent or present in
very small quantities, but I can look up the map references
for you in a few minutes.’

‘You know,’ said Conway with feeling, ‘I still don’t want
you here, but I’m glad you’ve come.’

‘Thank you,’ said Murchison, then added, ‘1 think.’

Five minutes later Murchison had all the available infor-
mation. She said, ‘The subsurface forms a small plain ringed
by low mountains in that area. Aerial sensors tell us that it
is unusually rich in minerals, but then so is most of the
centre of this land mass. Our test bores were very widely
spaced so that we could easily have missed picking up brain
material, but I’m pretty sure, now, that it is there.’

Conway nodded, then said, ‘Harrison, that will be the
next stop. But it’s too far to go travelling on or under the
surface. Take us topside and arrange for a transport copter
to lift us to the spot. And on the way would you mind
angling us towards throat tunnel Forty-three, as close to the
incision line as you can manage, so that I can see how the

104

patient reacts to the early stages of the operation. It is
bound to have some natural defence against gross physical
injury. . . .’

He broke off, his mood swinging suddenly from high ex-
citement to deepest gloom. He said, ‘Dammit, I wish I had
concentrated on the tools from the very beginning, instead
of getting sidetracked with the rollers, and then thinking
that those overgrown leucocytes were the intelligent tool-
users. I’ve wasted far too much time.’

’We’re not Wasting time now,’ said Murchison, and
pointed towards his repeater screens.

For better or for worse, major surgery had begun.

Five

The main screen showed a line of heavy cruisers playing
ponderous follow-my-leader along the first section of the
incision, rattlers probing deep while their pressors held the
edges of the wound apart to allow deeper penetration by
the next ship in line. Like all of the Emperor class ships
they were capable of delivering a wide variety of frightful-
ness in very accurately metered doses, from putting a few
streets-ful of rioters to sleep to dispensing atomic annihila-
tion on a continental scale. The Monitor Corps never al-
lowed any situation to deteriorate to the point where the
use of mass destruction weapons became the only solution,
but they kept them as a big and potent stick — like most
policemen, the Federation’s law enforcement arm knew
that an undrawn baton had better and more long-lasting
effects than one that was too busy cracking skulls. But their
most effective and versatile close-range weapon — versatile
because it served equally well either as a sword or a plough-
share — ^was the rattler.

A development of the artificial gravity system which
compensated for the killing accelerations used by Federa-

105

tion spaceships, and the repulsion screen which gave pro-
tection against meteorites or which allowed a vessel with
sufficient power reserves to hover above a planetary surface
like an old-time dirigible airship, the rattler beam simply
pushed and pulled, violently, with a force of up to one
hundred Gs, several times a minute.

It was very rarely that the Corps were forced to use their
rattlers in anger — normally the fire control officers had to
be satisfied with using them to clear and cultivate rough
ground for newly-established colonies — and for the opti-
mum effect the focus had to be really tight. But even a
diffuse beam could be devastating, especially on a small
target like a scoutship. Instead of tearing off large sections
of hull plating and making metallic mincemeat of the
underlying structure, it shook the whole ship until the men
inside rattled.

On this operation, however, the focus was very tight and
the range known to the last inch.

Visually it was not at all spectacular. Each cruiser had
three rattler batteries which could be brought to bear, but
they pushed and pulled so rapidly that the surface seemed
hardly to be disturbed. Only the relatively gentle tractor
beams positioned between the rattlers seemed to be doing
anything — they pulled up the narrow wedge of material
and shredded vegetation so that the next rattler in line
could deepen the incision. It would not be until the incision
had penetrated to the subsurface and extended for several
miles that the other squadrons still hanging in orbit would
come in to widen the cut into what they all hoped would
be a trench wide enough to check the spread of vegetable
infection from the excised and decomposing dead material.

As a background to the pictures Conway could hear the
clipped voices of the ordnance officers reporting in. There
seemed to be hundreds of them, all saying the same things
in the fewest possible words. At irregular intervals a quiet,

io6

unhurried voice would break in, directing, approving, co-
ordinating the overall effort — the voice of God, sometimes
known as Fleet Commander Dermod, the ranking Monitor
Corps officer of Galactic Sector Twelve and as such the
tactical director of more than three thousand major fleet
units, supply and communications vessels, support bases,
ship production lines, and the vast number of beings. Earth-
human and otherwise, who manned them.

If the operation came unstuck, Conway certainly would
not be able to complain about the quality of the help. He
began to feel quietly pleased with the way things were
going.

The feeling lasted for all of ten minutes, during which
time the incision line passed through the tunnel — ^Number
Forty-three — ^which they had just entered. Conway could
actually see the inward end of the seal, a thick, corrugated
sausage of tough plastic inflated to fifty pounds per square
inch which pressed against the tunnel walls. Special
arrangements had been needed to guard against loss of
working fluid because the strata creature’s healing processes
were woefully slow. Its blood was quite literally water and
one important quality which water did not have was the
ability to coagulate.

Two Corpsmen and a Melfan medic were on guard beside
the seal. They seemed to be agitated, but there were so
many leucocytes moving about the tunnel that he could not
see the reason for it. His screens showed the incision line
crossing the throat tunnel. A few hundred gallons of water
between the seal and the incision poured away — consider-
ing the size of the patient, it was scarcely a drop. The
rattlers and tractors moved on, extending and deepening
the cut while the great immaterial pressor beams, the in-
visible stilts which supported the enormous weight of the
cruisers, pushed the edges apart until the incision became a

107

widening and deepening ravine. A small charge of chemical
explosive brought down the roof of the emptied section of
tunnel, reinforcing the plastic seal. Everything seemed to be
working exactly as planned, until the immediate attention
signal began flashing on his board and Major Edwards’ face
filled the screen.

‘Conway,’ said the Major urgently, ‘the seal in Tunnel
Forty-three is under attack by tools.‘

‘But that’s impossible,’ said Murchison, in the scandalised
tones of one who has caught a friend cheating at cards. ‘The
patient has never interfered with our internal operations.
There are no eye plants down here to give away our posi-
tions, no light to speak of, and the seal isn’t even metal.
They never attack plastic material on the surface, just men
and machines.’

‘And they attack men because we betray our presence by
trying to take mental control of them,’ Conway said
quickly, then to Edwards, ‘Major, get those people away
from the seal and into the supply shaft. Quickly. 1 can’t
talk to them directly. While they’re doing that tell them to
try not to think ’

He broke off as the seal ahead disappeared in a soft white
explosion of bubbles which roared towards them along the
tunnel roof. He could not see anything outside the digger
and inside only Edwards’ face and pictures of ships in line
astern formation.

‘Doctor, the seal’s gone,’ shouted the Major, his eyes slid-
ing to one side. The debris behind the seal is being washed
away. Harrison, dig in ! ’

But the Lieutenant could not dig in because the bubbles
roaring past made it impossible to see. He threw the tracks
into reverse, but the current sweeping them along was so
strong that the digger was just barely in contact with the
floor. He killed the floodlights because reflection from the
froth outside the canopy was dazzling them. But there was

io8

still a patch of light ahead, growing steadily larger

‘Edwards, cut the rattlers . . . ! ’

A few seconds later they were swept out of the tunnel as
part of a cataract which tumbled down an organic cliff into
a ravine which seemed to have no bottom. The vehicle did
not explode into its component parts nor themselves into
strawberry jam, so they knew that Major Edwards had
been able to kill the rattler batteries in time. When they
crashed to a halt a subjective eternity later, two of the re-
peater screens died in spectacular implosions and the cata-
ract which had cushioned their fall on the way down began
battering at their side, pushing and rolling them along the
floor of the incision.

‘Anyone hurt?’ said Conway.

Murchison eased her safety webbing and winced. ‘I’m
black and blue and . . . and embossed all over.’

That,’ said Harrison in an obviously uninjured tone, ‘I
would like to see.’

Both relieved and irritated, Conway said, ‘First we should
see to our patient.’

The only operable viewscreen was transmitting a picture
taken from one of the copters stationed above the incision.
The heavy cruisers had drawn off a short distance to leave
the operative field clear for rescue and observation copters,
which buzzed and dipped above the wound like great metal
flies. Thousands of gallons of water were pouring from the
severed throat tunnel every minute, carrying the bodies of
leucocytes, farmer fish, incompletely digested food anff
clumps of vital internal vegetation into and along the
ravine. Conway signalled for Edwards.

‘We’re safe,’ he said before the other could speak, ‘but
this is a mess. Unless we can stop this loss of fluid, the
stomach system will collapse and we will have killed in-
stead of cured our patient. Dammit, why doesn’t it have
some method of protecting itself against gross physical in-

109

jury, a non-return valve arrangement or some such? I cer-
tainly did not expect this to happen. . .

Conway checked himself, realising that he was beginning
to whine and make excuses instead of issuing instructions.
Briskly, he said, ‘1 need expert advice. Have you a specialist
in short-range, low-power explosive weapons?’

night,’ said Edwards. A few seconds later a new voice
said, ‘Ordnance control, Vespasian, Major Holroyd. Can I
help you. Doctor?’

/ sincerely hope so, thought Conway, while aloud he
went on to outline his problem.

They were faced with the emergency situation of a
patient bleeding to death on the table. Whether the being
concerned was large or small, whether its body fluid was
Earth-human blood, the superheated liquid metal used by
the TLTUs of Threcald Five, or the somewhat impure water
which carried food and specialised internal organisms to
the farflung extremities of this Drambon strata creature’s
body, the result would be the same — steadily reducing
blood pressure, increasingly deep shock, spreading muscular
paralysis, and death.

Normal procedure in these circumstances would be to
control the bleeding by tying off the damaged blood vessel
and suturing the wound. But this particular vessel was a
tunnel with walls no more strong or elastic than the sur-
rounding body material, so they could not be tied or even
clamped. As Conway saw it the only method remaining
was to plug the ruptured vessel by bringing down the tun-
nel roof.

‘Close-range TR-ys,’ said the ordnance officer quickly.
They are aerodynamically clean, so there will be no prob-
lem shooting into the flow, and provided there are no sharp
bends near the mouth of the tunnel any desired penetration
can be achieved by ’

‘No,’ said Conway firmly. ‘I’m concerned about the com-

IIO

pression effects of a large explosion in the tunnel itself. The
shock wave would be transmitted deep into the interior and
a great many farmer fish and leucocytes would die, not to
mention large quantities of the fragile internal vegetation.
We must seal the tunnel as close to the incision as possible,
Major, and confine the damage to that area.’

‘Armour-piercing B-22s, then,’ said Holroyd promptly. ‘In
this material we could get penetrations of fifty yards with-
out any trouble. I suggest a simultaneous launch of three
missiles, spaced vertically above the tunnel mouth so that
they will bring down enough loose material to block the
tunnel even against the pressure of water trying to push it
away as it subsides.’

‘Now,’ said Conway, ‘you’re talking.’

But Vespasian's ordnance officer could do more than talk.
Within a very few minutes the screen showed the cruiser
hovering low over the incision. Conway did not see the
missiles launched because he had suddenly remembered to
check if their digger had been swept far enough to avoid
being buried in the debris, which fortunately it had. His
first indication that anything at all had happened was when
the flow of water turned suddenly muddy, slowed to a
trickle and stopped. A few minutes later great gobs of thick,
viscous mud began to ooze oyer the lip of the tunnel and
suddenly a wide area around the niouth began to sag, fall
apart, and slip like a mass of brown porridge into the
ravine.

The tunnel mouth was now six times larger than it had
been and the patient continued to bleed with undiminished
force.

‘Sorry, Doctor,’ said Holroyd. ‘Shall I repeat the dose and
try for greater penetration ?’

‘No, wait.’

Conway tried desperately to think. He knew that he was
conducting a surgical operation, but he did not really be-

lieve it — both the problem and the patient were too big. If
Murchison or Harrison were in the same condition, even if
no instruments or medication were available, he would
know what to do — check the flow at a pressure point,
apply a tourniquet . . . that was it !

‘Holroyd, plant three more in the same position and
depth as last time,’ he said quickly. ‘But before you launch
them can you arrange your vessel’s pressor beams so that as
many of them as possible will be focused just above the
tunnel opening ? Angle them against the face of the incision
instead of having them acting vertically, if possible. The
idea is to use the weight of your ship to compress and
support the material brought down by the missiles.’

‘Can do. Doctor.’

It took less than fifteen minutes for Vespasian to re-
arrange and refocus her invisible feet and launch the mis-
siles, but almost at once the cataract ceased and this time it
did not resume. The tunnel opening was gone and in its
place there was a great, saucer-shaped depression in the
wall of the incision where Vespasian’s starboard pressors
were focused. Water still oozed through the compacted
seal, but it would hold so long as the cruiser maintained
position and leaned her not inconsiderable weight on it. As
extra insurance another inflatable seal was already being
moved into the supply tunnel.

Suddenly the picture was replaced by that of a lined,
young old face above green-clad shoulders on which there
rested a quietly impressive weight of insignia. It was the
Fleet Commander himself.

‘Doctor Conway. My flagship has engaged in some odd
exercises in her time, but never before have we been asked
to hold a tourniquet.’

‘I’m sorry, sir — ^it seemed the only way of handling the
situation. But right now, if you don’t mind, Td like you to
have this digger lifted to map reference numbers. . . .’

He broke off because Harrison was waving at him. The
Lieutenant said softly, ‘Not this digger. Ask him to have the
other one checked out and waiting when they get around to
pulling us out.’

Six

Three hours later they were in the second modified and
strengthened digger, suspended under a transport copter
and approaching the area which, they hoped, contained the
strata creature’s brain and/or tool-producing facilities. The
trip gave them a chance to do some constructive theorising
about their patient.

They were now convinced that it had evolved originally
from a mobile vegetable form. It had always been large and
omnivorous and when this life-form began to live off itself
the parts grew in size and complexity and shrank in
numbers. There did not seem to be any way that the strata
creature could reproduce itself, it simply continued to live
and grow until one of its own kind who was bigger than it
was killed it. Their patient was the biggest, oldest, toughest,
and wisest of its kind. As the sole occupant of its land mass
for many thousands of years, there had no longer been the
necessity for it to move itself bodily and so it had taken
root again.

But this had not been a process of devolution. With no
chance of cannibalising others of its own kind, it devised
methods of controlling its growth and of rendering its
metabolism more efficient by evolving tools to do the jobs
like mining, investigating the subsurface, processing neces-
sary minerals for its nerve network. The original farmer
fish were probably a strain which were able to survive, like
the legendary Jonah, in its stomach and later grow plant
teeth for both the parent creature and the farmer fish to
defend themselves against sea predators sucked in by the
mouths. How the leucocytes got there was still not clear.

”3

but the rollers occasionally ran across a smaller, less highly
evolved variety which were probably the leeches’ wild
cousins.

‘But one point which we must keep in mind when we try
to talk to it,’ Conway ended seriously, ‘is that the patient is
not only blind, deaf, and dumb, it has never had another of
its own kind to talk to. Our problem isn’t simply learning a
peculiar and difficult e-t language, we have to communicate
with something which does not even know the meaning of
the word communicate.’

‘If you’re trying to raise my morale,’ said Murchison
drily, ‘you aren’t.’

Conway had been staring ahead through the forward
canopy, mostly to avoid having to look at the carnage de-
picted on his repeater screens where the tool attacks were
taking an increasingly heavy toll at the feeding and trans-
fusion sites. He said suddenly, ‘The suspected brain area is
far too extensive to be searched quickly but, correct me if
I’m wrong, isn’t this also the locality where Descartes made
her first touchdown? If that is so then the tools sent to
investigate her had a relatively short distance to come, and
if it is possible to trace the path of a tool by the scar tissue
it leaves in the body material ’

‘It is,’ said Murchison, looking excited. Harrison gave
new instructions to the transport copter’s pilot without
having to be told, and a few minutes later they were down,
cutting blades spinning and nosing into their patient’s
spongy quasi-flesh.

But instead of the large, cylindrical plug cut from the
body material they found a flat, reversed conical section
which tapered sharply to a narrow, almost hair-thin wound
which angled almost at once towards the suspected brain
area.

‘The ship would have been drawn only a short distance
below the surface, obviously,’ said Murchison. ‘Enough to

1 14

let tools make contact with its total surface while sup-
ported by body material, instead of making a fleeting con-
tact after bouncing themselves into the air. But do you
notice how the tools, even though they must have been
cutting through at top speed, still managed to avoid sever-
ing the root network which relays their mental instruc-
tions?’

‘At the present angle of descent,’ Harrison cut in, ‘we are
about twenty minutes from the subsurface. Sonar readings
indicate the presence of caverns or deep pits.’

Before Conway could reply to either of them, Edwards’
face flicked on to the main screen. ‘Doctor, seals Thirty-
eight through Forty-one have gone. We’re already holding
tourniquets at Eighteen, Twenty-six, and Forty-three,
but ’

‘Same procedure,’ snapped Conway.

There was a dull clang followed by metallic scraping
sounds running the length of the digger. The sounds were
repeated with rapidly increasing frequency. Without look-
ing up, Harrison said. Tools, Doctor. Dozens of them. But
they can’t build up much impetus coming at us through this
spongy stuff and our extra armour should cope. But I’m
worried about the antenna housing, though.’

Before Conway could ask why, Murchison turned from
the viewpoint. She said. ‘I’ve lost the original trail. Doc-
tor — this area is practically solid with tool scar tissue.
Traffic must be very heavy around here.’

The secondary screens were showing logistic displays on
the deployment of ships, earthmoving machinery, decon-
tamination equipment, and movements into and out of the
feeding and transfusion areas, and the main screen showed
Vespasian no longer in position above tunnel Forty-three. It
was losing height and wheeling around in a ponderous,
lateral spin while its pilot was obviously fighting hard to
keep it from flipping over on to its back.

IIS

One of its four pressor installations, Conway saw during
the next swing, had been smashed in as if by a gigantic
hammer and he knew without being told that this was the
one which had been holding closed the ruptured Forty-
three. As the ship whirled closer to the ground he wanted to
close his eyes, but then he saw that the spin was being
checked and that the surface vegetation was being flattened
by the three remaining pressors, fanned out at maximum
power to support the ship’s weight.

Vespasian landed hard but not catastrophically. Another
cruiser moved into position above Forty-three while surface
transport and copters raced towards the crash-landed ship
to give assistance. They arrived at the same time as a large
group of tools which were doing nothing at all to help.

Suddenly Dermod’s head filled the screen.

‘Doctor Conway,’ said the Fleet Commander in a cold
furious voice, ‘this is not the first time that 1 have had a
ship converted to scrap around me, but 1 have never learned
to enjoy the experience. The accident was caused by trying
to balance virtually the whole of the ship’s weight on one
narrowly focused pressor beam, with the result that its sup-
porting structure buckled and damn near wrecked the ship.’

His tone warmed a little, but only temporarily, as he
went on, ‘If we are to hold tourniquets over every tunnel,
and with tools attacking every seal it looks as if we will
have to do just that, I shall have either to withdraw my
ships for major structural modifications or use them for an
hour or so at a time and check for incipient structural
failure after each spell of duty. But this will tie up a much
larger number of ships in unproductive activity, and the
farther we extend the incision the more tunnels we will
have to sit on and the slower the work will go. The opera-
tion is fast becoming a logistical impossibility, the casualty
figures and material losses are making it indistinguishable
from a full-scale war, and if I thought that the only result

ii6

would be the satisfaction of your medical curiosity. Doctor,
and that of our cultural contact people, 1 would throw a
permanent Hold on it right now. I have the mind of a
policeman, not a soldier — the Federation prefers it that
way. I don’t glory in this sort of thing. . .

The digger lurched and for an instant Conway felt a
sensation impossible in these surroundings, that of free fall.
Then there was a crash as the vehicle struck rocky ground.
It landed on its side, rolled over twice, and moved forward
again, but skidding and slewing to one side. The sound of
tools striking the hull was deafening.

Two vertical creases appeared on the Fleet Commander’s
forehead. He said, ‘Having trouble. Doctor?’

The constant banging of tools made it hard to think.
Conway nodded and said, ‘1 didn’t expect the seals to be
attacked, but now 1 realise that the patient is simply trying
to defend itself where it thinks it is under the heaviest
attack. I also realise now that its sense of touch is not re-
stricted to its top surface. You see, it is blind, deaf, and
dumb, but it seems to be able to feel in three dimensions.
The eye-plants and subsurface root networks allow it to feel
areas of local pressure, but vaguely, without detail. To feel
the fine details it sends tools, which are extremely sensi-
tive — sensitive enough to feel the airflow over their wings
in the glider configuration and reproduce the shape them-
selves at will. Our patient learns very quickly and that
glider 1 thought at has cost a lot of lives. 1 wish ’

‘Doctor Conway,’ the Fleet Commander broke in harshly,
‘you are either trying to make excuses or giving me a very
basic lecture with which 1 am already familiar. 1 have time
to listen to neither. We are faced with a surgical and tactical
emergency. 1 require guidance.’

Conway shook his head violently. He had the feeling that
he had just said or thought of something important but he
did not know what it was. He had to stay with his present

117

train of thought regardless if he expected to drag it out into
the light again.

He went on. The patient sees, experiences everything, by
touch. So far our only area of common contact are the
tools. They are thought-controlled extensions of its sense of
touch throughout and for a short distance above the
patient’s body. Our own mental radiation and control are
more concentrated and of strictly limited range. The situa-
tion has been that of two fencers trying to communicate
only through the tips of their foils ’

He stopped abruptly because he was talking to an empty
screen. All three repeaters glowed with power, but there
was neither sound nor vision.

Harrison shouted, ‘I was afraid of this. Doctor. We
strengthened the hull armour but had to cover the antenna
housing with a plastic radome to allow two-way communi-
cations. The tools have found our weak spot. Now we are
deaf, dumb, and blind, too — and missing one leg because
our port caterpillar tread won’t work.’

Murchison was tapping his other shoulder and pointing
outside.

The digger had come to rest on a flat shelf of rock in a
large cavern which angled steeply into the subsurface.
Above and behind them hung a great mass of the
creature’s body material from which there was suspended
thousands of rootlets which joined and rejoined until they
became thick, silvery cables writhing motionlessly across
the cavern floor, walls, and roof, before disappearing into
the depths. Each cable had at least one bud sprouting from
it, like a leaf of wrinkled tinfoil. The more well-developed
buds quivered and were trying to take the shapes of the
tools which were attacking them.

This is one of the places where it makes the tools,’ she
said, using a spotlight as pointer, ‘or should I say grows
them — I still can’t decide whether this is an animal or

vegetable life-form basically. The nervous system seems to
be centred in this area so it is almost certainly part of the
brain as well. And it is sensitive — do you see how carefully
the tools avoid those silver cables while they are attack-
ing?’

‘We’ll do the same,’ said Conway, then to Harrison, ‘That
is if you can move the digger on one track to that over-
hanging wall with the cables running along it, without
crushing those two on the floor?’

Damage in this sensitive area could have serious effects
on their patient.

The Lieutenant nodded and began rocking the digger
forward and backwards along the shelf until they were
tight against the indicated wall. Protected by the sensitive
cables above, the cavern floor below, and the rocky wall on
their starboard side, the tool attack was confined to their
unprotected port side. They could once again hear them-
selves think, but Harrison pointed out firmly but apologeti-
cally that they could not climb the slope or dig their way
out on one track, that they could not call for help and that
they had air for only fomteen hours, and then only if they
sealed their suits to use their remaining tanked air.

‘Let’s do that now,’ said Conway briskly, ‘and move out-
side. Station yourselves at each end of the digger, under the
cables, and with your backs to the cavern wall. That way
you will have to think off attacks from the front only — any
tool trying to cut through the rock behind you will make
too much noise to take you by surprise. I also want you far
enough from my position amidships so that your mental
radiation will not affect the tools which I will be trying to
control. . . .’

‘1 know that smug, self-satisfied look,’ said Murchison to
the Lieutenant as she began sealing her helmet. The Doctor
has had a sudden rush of brains to the head. I think he
intends talking to the patient.’

119

‘What language?’ asked Harrison drily.

‘I suppose,’ said Conway, smiling to show the confidence
which he did not feel, ’you could call it three-dimensional
Braille.’

Quickly he explained what he hoped to do and a few
minutes later they were in position outside the digger.
Conway sat with his back to the port track housing a few
feet from a water-filled depression in the cavern floor. There
was a hole of unknown depth in the centre of the depres-
sion where a cable or similar ore-extracting plant had eaten
its way into the rock. To one side of him a group of seven
or eight tools had merged together to encircle and squeeze
the vehicle’s hull, and some of the armour was beginning to
gape at the seams. Conway thought a break in the metal
band and then he rolled it into the depression like a great
lump of animated, silvery dough. Then he got down to
work.

Conway made no attempt to protect himself against
attacking tools. He intended concentrating so hard on one
particular shape that anything which came within mental
range would, he hoped, lose its dangerous edges or points.

Thought-shaping the creature’s outward aspect was easy.
Within a few minutes there was a large, silvery pancake — a
small-scale replica of the patient — lying in the centre of
the pool. But thinking three dimensionally of the mouths
and their connecting tunnels and stomachs was not so easy.
Even harder was the stage when he began thinking the tiny
stomachs into expanding and contracting, sucking the
gritty, algae-filled water into his scale model and expelling
it again.

It was a crude, oversimplified model. The best he could
manage at one time was eight mouths and connecting
stomachs and he was very much afraid that it bore the
same relation to the patient that a doll did to a living baby.
But then he began to add the creeping motions he had

120

observed in smaller, younger strata creatures, keeping the
area around the central depression motionless, however,
and hoping that with the pumping motions of the stomachs
he was giving the impression of a living organism. The
sweat poured off his forehead and into his eyes, but by then
it did not matter that he could not see properly because the
sections he was shaping were out of sight anyway. Then he
began to think certain areas solid, motionless, dead. He ex-
tended these dead, motionless, and detail-less areas until
gradually the whole model was a solid, lifeless lump.

Then he blinked the sweat out of his eyes and started all
over again, and then again, and suddenly Murchison and
the pilot were standing beside him.

‘They aren’t attacking us any more,’ said Harrison
quietly, ‘and before they change their mind I am going to
try fixing that damaged track. At least, there is no shortage
of tools.’

Murchison said, ‘Can I help — apart from keeping my
mind blank to avoid warping your model ?’

Without looking up Conway said, ‘Yes, please. I’m going
to take it through the same sequence once again, but halt it
at the point where the dead areas extend to at the present
time. When I do that I would like you to think the posi-
tions of our incisions and extend and widen them while I
seal the severed throat tunnels and think the feeding and
transfusion shafts. You withdraw the excised material a
short distance and think it solid, dead, that is, while I try to
get across the idea that the remainder is alive and twitching
and likely to stay that way.’

Murchison caught on very quickly, but Conway had no
way of knowing if their patient had, or could, catch on.
Behind them Harrison was at work on the damaged tread
while before them their model of the patient and the effects
of their present surgery became more and more detailed —
right down to the miniature corrugated seals and what

I2I

happened to the creature when one of them was collapsed.
But still there was no indication from the patient that it
understood what they were trying to tell it.

Suddenly Conway stood up and began climbing the slop-
ing floor. He said, ‘I’m sorry, I have to move out of range
for a minute to catch my mental breath.’

‘Me, too,’ said Murchison a few minutes later. ‘I’ll join
you . . . Doctor, look ! ’

Conway had been staring at the darkness of the cavern
roof to rest both his mind and his eyes. He looked down
quickly, thinking they were under attack again, and saw
Murchison pointing at their model, their working model.

Despite it being out of range of both their minds it had
not slumped down or lost detail. Somebody was maintain-
ing it exactly as they had been doing. All at once Conway
forgot his physical and mental fatigue.

Excitedly he said, ‘This must be its way of saying that it
understands us. But we’ve got to widen communications,
tell it more about ourselves. Go collect a few more tools
and think a model of this cavern complete with nerve
cables — I’ll shape the digger to scale with moving models of
the three of us. They’ll be crude, of course, but to begin
with we only need to get across the idea of our small size
and vulnerability to tool attacks. Then we’ll move away for
a short distance and shape a model of the digger in opera-
tion, then ’dozers, copters, and scoutships on the surface —
nothing as big and complicated as Descartes, at least to be-
gin with. We’ll have to keep everything very simple.’

In a very short time the shelf around the digger was
carpeted with models which were being maintained by the
patient as soon as they were completed, and more and more
tools were rolling heavily but very gently towards them,
eager to be shaped. But their visors were becoming almost
opaque with perspiration and their suit air was running out.
Murchison insisted that she had time for just one more

122

shaping, a large one using upwards of twenty tools, when
Harrison appeared from behind the digger.

‘I have to go inside,’ said the Lieutenant. ‘Unlike some
people 1 have been working hard and burning up my air. . . .’

‘Kick him for me,’ said Murchison to Conway. ‘You’re
closer.’

. . . but the digger will work at about quarter speed,’
Harrison continued. ‘And if it doesn’t we may still be able
to call for help. I used a tool to shape a new antenna — I
knew the exact dimensions — so we may even get two-way
vision ’

He stopped abruptly, staring at what Murchison was
doing to her tools.

A little crossly she said, ‘As the pathologist of the party .it
is my job to tell the patient what we look, or rather feel,
like. This model has a much-simplified respiratory, diges-
tive, and circulatory system and, as you can see, articula-
tion at all the main joints. Naturally, as I know a little more
about myself than anyone else, this representative of man-
kind is in fact female. Equally important, I do not want to
confuse the patient needlessly by adding clothes.’

Harrison did not have enough oxygen left to reply. They
followed him into the digger and, while Conway made con-
tact with the surface, Murchison instinctively raised her
hand in farewell to the cavern and the shapes of the tool
models scattered across the shelf. She must have been think-
ing very hard about her goodbye because her last model
raised its hand also and kept it there while the digger
crawled slowly out of mental range.

Suddenly all three repeaters were alive and Dermod was
staring at him, his face reflecting concern, relief, and ex-
citement in sequence and then all together. He said, ‘Doctor,
I thought we’d lost you — you blanked out three hours ago.
But 1 can report progress. The incision is proceeding and all
tool attacks ceased half an hour ago. There is no tool

123

trouble reported from the tunnel seals, the decontamination
teams, the transfusion shafts, anywhere. Doctor, is this a
temporary condition?’

Conway let his breath go in a long, loud sigh of relief.
Their patient was a very bright lad despite its physically
slow reaction times. He shook his head and said, ‘You will
have no more trouble from the tools. In fact, you will find
them of assistance in helping maintain equipment and for
use in awkward sections of the incision once we make it
understand our needs. You can also forget about digging
that isolation trench — our patient retains enough mobility
to withdraw itself from the newly excised material — ^which
means that ships which would have been tied up in digging
that trench will now be free to extend the incision more
rapidly, so that our operation will be completed in a frac-
tion of the time originally thought necessary. You see, sir,’
Conway ended, ‘we now have the active co-operation of
our patient.’

Major surgery was completed in just under four months
and Conway was ordered back to Sector General. Post-
operative treatment would take a great many years and
would proceed in conjunction with the exploration of
Drambo and the closer investigation of its life-forms and
cultures. Before leaving, while he was still seriously
troubled by the thought of the Monitor Corps casualty
figures, Conway had once questioned the value of what
they had done. A rather supercilious cultural contact special-
ist had tried to make it very simple for him by saying that
difference, whether it was cultural, physiological, or tech-
nological, was immensely valuable. They would learn much
from the strata creature and the rollers while they were
teaching them. Conway, with some difficulty, accepted
that. He could also accept the fact that, as a surgeon, his
work on Drambo was done. It was much harder to accept

124

the fact that the pathology team, particularly one member
of it, still had a lot of work to do.

While CyMara did not openly enjoy his anguish, neither
did he display sympathy.

‘Stop suffering so loudly in silence, Conway,’ said the
Chief Psychologist on his return, ‘and sublimate yourself —
preferably in quicklime. But failing that there is always
work, and an odd case has just come in which you might
like to look at. I’m being polite, of course, it is your case as
of now. Observe.’

The large visiscreen behind O’Mara’s desk came to life
and he went on. This beastie was found in one of the
hitherto unexplored regions, the victim of an accident
which virtually cut its ship and itself in two. Airtight bulk-
heads sealed off the undamaged section and your patient
was able to withdraw itself, or some of itself, before they
closed. It was a large ship, filled with some kind of nutrient
earth, and the victim is still alive — or should I say half
alive. You see, we don’t know which half of it we rescued.
Well?’

Conway stared at the screen, already devising methods of
immobilising a section of the patient for examination and
treatment, of synthesising supplies of that nutrient soil
which now must be virtually sucked dry, and for studying
the wreck’s controls to gain data on its sensory equipment.
If the accident which had wrecked its ship had been due to
an explosion in the power plant, which was likely, then this
hiight well be the front half containing the brain.

His new patient was not quite the Midgaard Serpent but
it did not fall far short of it. Twisting and coiling it practi-
cally filled the enormous hangar deck which had been emp-
tied to accommodate it.

‘Well?’ said O’Mara again.

Conway stood up. Before turning to go he grinned and
said, ‘Small, isn’t it?’

125

V

t

THE CYCLOPS PATROL
by

Wlliam Spencer

Industrial espionage is now a highly organised
business — in the competitive world of technical
development, refined spy devices will soon be the
norm rather than the unusual.

THE CYCLOPS PATROL

The dull grey fly buzzed irritatingly round Floyd’s head as
he bent over the computer display. He drew another line
with the light pen on the projected micro-circuit, trying to
ignore the fly, a wavering dark blur on the fringes of his
vision.

Then, his patience snapping, he took a side-swipe at the
buzzing creature with his free hand — a clumsy swipe that
missed as the fly dodged easily upwards. Floyd muttered a
few choice expletives half-audibly.

The fly continued to hover, just out of reach, over his
head. It was a big ugly fly, of a breed that Floyd did not
recognise. Some mutant form, perhaps, resulting from radi-
ation or the wholesale use of insecticides?

Floyd passed the back of his hand across his damp brow.
He had almost finished the working diagram now. The
micro-circuit was a new one, a breakthrough in design. But
it was a pity that a firm which was a leader in advanced
electronics could not provide better airconditioning. Some
fault in the system had caused the temperature in Floyd’s
design office to rise a shade too high for comfort.

Outside it was excessively hot. The floor-to-ceiling sun-
screens tempered the glare and the airconditioning should
have done the rest. Floyd supposed he should have com-
plained, but instead he had opened a small window behind
the sunscreens. There might be a suspicion of a breeze out-
side. And a lurking sense of claustrophobia made Floyd
anxious to feel some communication with the outside air.

129

An open window — hence the fly. There was a price you had
to pay for everything.

The door handle turned and someone came in silently.

Floyd glanced up quickly and saw it was Clone.

Floyd was allergic to security men and especially allergic
to this one. Heavy-jowled, unsmiling, padding around like a
cat. Clone made one feel vaguely guilty. Faint ghosts of half-
forgotten misdemeanours rose in the mind when his expres-
sionless eyes studied one’s exposed face.

Nevertheless, Floyd hated to show that he was disturbed
in any way by the security man’s presence. Over-correcting,
he had a special brand of false jollity which he reserved for
these visits. Swallowing hard, he turned a beaming smile on
Clone.

'Hullo there, old man! How goes the industrial espion-
age?’ Floyd clapped him on the back with excessive bon-
homie.

Qone looked like a man with chronic indigestion.

‘It’s not a joke. The people over the way — ^you-know-
who — ^will stop at nothing to get information. I may say
that the Board of Directors takes security very seriously.’

‘Good for them. But some of us in the lower-income
brackets actually soil our hands with work. We don’t have
energy to spare to worry about industrial espionage — ^we
leave that sort of thing to you and the Board.’

Clone’s face remained impassive. He did not descend to
the trivial level of small-talk or jest. But his eyes were rest-
lessly flickering round the room, inquisitive as a snake’s
double-tongue. His colourless eyes were so greedily naked
that Floyd always felt he was in the presence of something
obscene. Also, there was this background of incipient
guilt. . . .

Clone’s sharp glance had penetrated to the open window
behind the sunscreens.

He stiffened. ‘The window?’

130

‘Ye . . . es?’ Floyd was colouring somewhat and bending
over the computer panel to hide his embarrassment.

Clone’s face registered deep disapproval as he marched
stiffly over, reached through the sunscreen, and closed the
window with just the suspicion of a slam.

The fly, which had been hovering behind Clone’s head,
slipped through the window just before it shut.

’You know that’s against regulations,’ said Clone accus-
ingly.

‘I know. But it’s always so airless in here. The aircon-
ditioning is lousy.’

’It is hot in here. Bound to be, when you have the win-
dow open.’

’I tell you the airconditioning is on the blink.’ Floyd,
aggressively defensive, allowed his voice to rise slightly.

’In that case you should complain,’ said Clone sternly.
’Get it fixed.’

’I’m too busy. It’s quicker to set the window ajar. And
anyway what does it matter?’

Clone sat heavily in a chair. ‘I’m sorry you take that
view,’ he said.

Floyd knew he was in for one of Clone’s pep-talks on
security.

■This firm has a reputation for original thinking. We
spend a fortune on research and development to stay one
jump ahead of rival concerns. A careless attitude to security
can jeopardise that lead.’

‘But how does an open window . . . ?’

‘Somebody might have come in.’

‘Hardly — when I’m here.’

‘Don’t you ever go out of the room?’

‘Yes. But if I do, I close the window,’

‘And if you forget?’

Floyd began to get angry, thought better of it, and turned
his open palms upwards.

‘Oh, all right, then. I’ll keep the window closed in future.’

‘Please try to see that security is vital.’ Clone paced round
the room slowly, his face set in a mask of disapproval, then
padded silently out of the door.

Floyd breathed out a long sigh when the security man
had left. Putting the finishing touches to the micro-circuit,
he smouldered inwardly with words left unsaid.

Three weeks later, Floyd found himself in the Managing
Director’s office.

It was a vast, low room, the expensive muted furnish-
ings set off with carefully-sited electronic sculptures. Floyd
did not relish his rare visits to this sanctum. They tended to
coincide with moments Of crisis in his career. And today
there seemed to be an oppressive silence in the huge room.

Despite the soft lighting and the plushy carpet into which
you sank toe-deep, it was clear that the ambience was un-
friendly.

Floyd fidgeted while the MD pretended to be reading
some papers on his desk. Clone was hovering obsequiously
in the background, like a well- trained -butler eager to antici-
pate his master’s needs.

‘Ah, Floyd ! ’ said the MD at length, as though Floyd had
just walked into the room.

Floyd shifted his weight to the other foot.

‘Take a close look at that.’ The MD swivelled a heavy-
barrelled microscope and pushed it across the plastic desk
top.

Floyd bent forward and pressed his face to the visor,
touching the focus controls lightly.

‘One of our latest micro-circuits,’ he said after a moment.
‘The one we ’

‘Take a closer look, Floyd.’ The Managing Director’s
voice was edged like a saw. ‘Read the manufacturer’s
name.’

132

‘It says Iota . . . but . . . ! ’

‘But it looks exactly like one of ours. That, Floyd, is a
Chinese copy of our most advanced circuit. It could only
have been obtained as a result of industrial espionage.’

The Managing Director paused and looked solemnly at
Floyd.

‘Naturally we’re checking everyone who had access to
the circuit. As you know, this particular job was entrusted
to a mere handful of our most senior people.’

Floyd nodded. So stone-faced Clone had something to
worry about after all.

‘Now I’m not suggesting that you are unreliable, Floyd.
We’ve known each other a long time. But you may have
been careless. Clone here tells me that he found a window
open in your room on one occasion.’

He’d expected the accusation to come up. But now, con-
fronted by it, he found nothing to say. Floyd became aware
of Clone and the Managing Director looking directly at
him, waiting for some kind of explanation or apology.

‘I, er . . . yes . . . that’s true.’

‘Really, Floyd, I should have thought a man of your
experience, working with a piece of top-secret new cir-
cuitry, would have known better.‘

Floyd gulped. ‘But I was there all the time. No one could
have got in.’

The Managing Director glanced round at Clone. ‘Perhaps
when the sunscreens were parted momentarily to open or
close the window. Iota could have managed a shot with a
telephoto lens or laser scanner.’

‘No, sir, that’s not possible,’ blurted Floyd. ‘The drawing
board is turned so that no part of it is visible from the
window. Mr. Clone, here, made a special point of having
the drawing board turned that way.’ Give old misery a bit
of credit, thought Floyd, though it’s hardly possible to
sweeten the old sourpuss.

133

‘Good thinking. Clone,’ said the MD, beaming a warm
ray of approval at the security man. ‘Well, Floyd, I accept
your statement. There’s nothing we can do about it, now
that the circuit has been copied. But 1 want you to be very
much more careful in the future. We cannot afford another
security leak like this. Understand?’

Floyd mumbled something placatory and bowed himself
out, trudging soundlessly over the deep carpet.

The security scare passed off quietly enough. Indeed, only
a few senior people were aware of the exact circumstances.
Floyd had retained the confidence of the Board of Directors
sufficiently to be entrusted with further top-secret work.
Next summer found him engaged on another major de-
velopment in the company’s micro-circuitry. He felt in
good spirits that morning as he left his car in the parking
lot and walked across the lawns to the block where he
worked.

The lawns were laid out with beds of flowers, formal
pools, and a few trees here and there. His way took him
under one of the trees, and its shadow covered him for a
moment. A blundering dark-grey fly dropped out of the
foliage and winged down towards Floyd, unnoticed. It
settled on the back of his coat, over the left shoulder
blade.

Floyd crossed another sunlit lawn. Then he entered the
electronic doors, showed his pass, and nodded to the uni-
formed doorman. The doorman pushed a button which
swung aside the armoured glass doors leading to the top
security wing. The doors closed noiselessly as soon as Floyd
was through.

Thinking of nothing in particular, Floyd paced along the
corridor to the door of his own room. He was whistling
some kind of tune as he entered, closed the door carefully,
and moved over to a block of cupboards.

134

Floyd did not see the fly detach itself from the back of
his coat just before he took it off.

The fly slipped across the room out of Floyd’s line of
vision and hid under the knee-hole of his desk.

Floyd put his coat in one of the cupboards. Then he
rolled up his sleeves, took out his notes of the day before,
and began to switch on the equipment.

He was working on a modification of the new micro-cir-
cuit. Deftly he put the circuit under the microscope, studied
it, and sketched with his light pen on the computer panel.

The fly emerged from its hiding place stealthily, rose up-
wards, and began to patrol back and forth behind Floyd’s
head, Floyd went on with his work, unaware of what was
happening.

Presently he took the micro-circuit from under the lens
with fine tweezers and laid it carefully in a plastic dish on
the table next to some test equipment.

Out of th^ corner of his eye, disbelieving, he saw the fly
swoop down like a hawk, gather the micro-circuit up in its
grappling legs, and make off with it. Floyd stared, immobile,
gulping down his astonishment, as the fly winged its way
across the room and disappeared on top of a high cupboard.

Floyd went after it with a heavy ruler. He had to get a
chair to stand on so as to be able to see where the thing had
settled. When he clambered up, he could see the fly sitting
quietly on top of the cupboard.

He brought the heavy ruler smashing down, but the fly
darted sideways. Before he could strike again, the thing had
clung to his forearm and he felt a sharp jab like a needle
point being thrust into his flesh.

With a feeling of sickened revulsion he flung the ugly
grey fly off his arm. For a second or two he stood bemused,
unable almost to comprehend what had happened. Then his
knees crumpled, his vision darkened, and he went crashing
unconscious to the floor.

135

When he regained consciousness he was lying
awkwardly at the foot of the chair. His head swam. For a
moment he could not analyse the situation : what had hap-
pened ? Then he remembered the fly.

A fly whose sting caused unconsciousness !

Warily he looked around him, but there was no sign of
the insect. His first impulse was to rush out of the door, in a
kind of panic, calling for help.

But on second thoughts, very possibly that was what the
fly wanted him to do. He found himself assuming that the
thing possessed a kind of intelligence, for it had acted with
considerable cimning so far. As he went out of the door, the
fly would go out of the door too and could hide itself any-
where in the building.

Floyd saw that the only hope of getting the micro-circuit
back was to keep the insect trapped in his room. He
couldn’t risk having it escape and disappear. He needed it as
evidence. Who would believe his story that a big fly had
stolen the micro-circuit — unless he was able to produce the
insect in question ? He would be written down as suffering
from delusions, and his security rating would decline to zero.

Security. That was the operative word. This was a secur-
ity problem. A job for Clone. He would ring him up and get
him to come and trap the fly. But first Clone would have to
install a wire mesh cage outside the door so that the
creature could not get out as he got in.

Floyd edged over to the phone. There was no sign of the
fly. But was it watching him from some hiding-place and
was it intelligent enough to see the threat to its safety posed
by Floyd making a phone call ? And if so, could it sting him
again ?

Floyd remembered reading somewhere of insects that
could only sting once and others that needed to recover
before they could sting a second time. At any rate he would
have to take that chance.

He was at his desk now.

He picked up the phone and dialled Qone’s number.

Qone’s voice crackled over the line, crisp and impersonal
as ever.

'Security here.’

‘Floyd. 1 have a security problem in Room 208.’

‘Yes?’

‘Bring a butterfly net.’

‘A butterfly net? Did 1 hear you right?’

‘But first you must. . . .’ Floyd felt the sharp jab in his
right forearm again. A dark object was sitting on his flesh.
He tried, clumsily, to crush it.

‘Fly got me again. . . .’ said Floyd indistinctly, slumping
forward on to the desk.

Floyd came round again to find himself lying on his back
on the carpet, his collar undone, and Qone bending over
him.

‘What happened?’ said Clone.

Floyd tried to clear his brain of the vaporous confusion
that was coiling there. His head felt as if it was splitting. It
was difficult to think straight.

Suddenly he remembered something and craned forward.
Forgetting the throbbing pain in his head, he thrust Clone
aside and sat bolt upright, pointing a bony finger.

The door,’ he said accusingly.

‘What about the door?’

‘It’s open.’

Coming in and seeing Floyd unconscious over the desk.
Clone had most unprof essionally left the door ajar.

‘And that's the last you’ll see of the fly.’

Clone was a sound man, very logical and orderly-minded
— except when he made absurd mistakes such as leaving
doors open.

It took Floyd a long time to explain about the fly. And

137

about the missing micro-circuit. That called for a great deal
of explaining.

They took him seriously enough to search the whole of
the security wing from top to bottom. But as Floyd ex-
pected, they found nothing. The building had been designed
to keep out unwanted human intruders, but not to keep in
flies. There were several unsealed crevices and ducts, and
unplugged overflow pipes, through which a determined fly
could make an escape.

Floyd tried to get the Managing Director to see it that
way. But when Iota came out with an exact replica of the
missing circuit, Floyd wished he could slink away some-
where and hide.

Floyd was still working at his old desk in Room 208. That
in itself was something to be thankful for. He’d fully ex-
pected to be dismissed, or at least down-graded, after the
last episode. But of course they didn’t allow him to work on
secret projects any more. At first the work he was put to do
was completely routine — the sort of thing any intelligent
junior could have coped with. A week or two later he was
given a concocted dummy project, designed to mislead Iota
if ever they should get hold of it.

Now Floyd was under orders to leave his window open
all the time. He sat at his desk in a special protective suit,
proof against horse-flies, wasps, hornets, and other forms of
airborne menace. Close at hand on the table, was a pro-
tective helmet somewhat like those that beekeepers wear,
but much tougher and sturdier. It was too ponderous for
Floyd to wear all the time, but he had practised putting it
on quickly. Clone had timed him with a stop-watch and
they had got it down to under five seconds.

So he sat at his desk day after day, chafing in the suit,
with the protective helmet at the ready and pretended to
work at the trivial tasks on which he was now employed.

138

The window was triggered so that, the moment an insect
flew through, it flipped shut. Just in case there was any
malfunction, Floyd had a button under his thumb which
could close the window independently of the automatic
control.

Concealed behind a screen, invisible from the window,
sat Clone, wearing an even tougher protective suit. With
grim devotion to duty. Clone insisted on wearing his helmet
almost the whole time, though he had provided himself
with a special air supply which made the suit a little
more tolerable.

Clone also had a button which could close the window, if
Floyd should be attacked and incapacitated before he could
get his helmet on.

As the days went by and no fly appeared, relations
between the two men became strained. Clone’s replies to
Floyd’s conversational, bantering sallies became shorter and
gruffer, through the swathes of his heavy helmet. In the end
Clone pretended not to hear Floyd’s remarks and just sat
there stolidly like a clumsily constructed mummy.

What irritated Floyd was the growing sense that Clone
had ceased to believe in the fly. He imagined Clone’s eyes
through the visor, looking at him strangely, watching for
the first sign of hallucinations or paranoid delusions. It was
of course a triumph of credulity that Clone and the MD had
accepted his story of the fly. There was some hard evidence,
true : his loss of consciousness and the two red marks like
hypodermic insertions on his arm. But these could easily
have been faked, Floyd had to admit. So, at first, he felt a
sense of gratitude that the security man had taken his story
seriously.

However as day followed day and nothing happened,
FlOyd sensed Clone’s belief wearing thin. It was being
stretched to the limit, while they kept up the absurd pan-
tomime of sitting there in the awkward suits. Had Clone

139

some time-limit in his mind, when Floyd was to be finally
discredited ? They could not sit there for ever.

Floyd saw the fly first. But that was only to be expected,
because Clone’s view was partly obstructed by his screen.
Floyd’s finger jerked towards the button. The autocontrol
flipped the window shut a fraction of a second before he
made contact.

A red warning light indicated to Clone what had hap-
pened, while Floyd struggled into his helmet.

It had been agreed that they would pretend not to see the
fly at first, so as to observe its behaviour when unmolested.
So Floyd bent over his desk and went through the motions
of working on the dummy project, as best he could in the
clumsy hood.

The fly patrolled back and forth behind Floyd’s head,
sizing up the situation. Presently Floyd went over to the
side of the room, on the pretext of checking a figure in a
reference book. There was a whir of grey glinting wings as
the fly swooped on the dummy micro-circuit and carried it
away.

Now Clone emerged from behind his screen, a ponderous
white-suited figure, moving awkwardly like a badly syn-
chronised automaton. He advanced towards the fly with a
large butterfly net. Floyd too picked up a butterfly net from
behind the screen and together they attempted to corner
and capture the small invader.

Their attempts were blundering and inaccurate, ham-
pered as they were by stiff protective suits. The fly easily
eluded their lunges and sailed over towards the window by
which it had entered. It collided with the glass. Bounced off.
Buzzed for a moment against the pane. Then, finding itself
trapped, darted menacingly towards its assailants.

Clone, who had been leading the chase, was directly in its
track. The insect clung to his right forearm and tried to

140

sting him. But the protective material of the suit proved
impervious to its barb. The security man stood quite still,
his arm extended and Floyd was able to clap his butterfly
net over the fly. But the diameter of the mouth of Floyd’s
net was considerably greater than that of Clone’s admit-
tedly bulky arm and the fly was able to escape again.

It swung round Floyd’s back and tried to sting him be-
tween the shoulder blades. Again the protective suits
proved their worth. Floyd shouted to the other man to clap
the net over his back. But Clone, moving ponderously in the
big suit, was not quick enough. The fly, baffled, made
for the top of the cupboard where it had eluded Floyd
before.

Here it encountered a fine mesh closing in the cavity at
the top of the cupboard. They had prepared the room by
sealing every cranny and closing off the recesses with
panels or wire mesh.

There was nowhere to hide.

The fly turned back from the mesh and circled the
room.

‘Keep it on the move,’ Clone shouted, his voice muffled
by the folds of his helmet.

This was the plan they had worked out, in the event of
the fly proving difficult to capture.

They lunged at the insect repeatedly with the nets, not
caring whether or not they caught it. So clumsy were their
movements and so agile the fly, that it was hardly in danger
of being ensnared. But what they were doing was to compel
it to remain constantly airborne.

The absurd battle between two men and a fly went on for
what seemed like hours. Floyd’s arm was aching as though
it was about to drop off and he was bathed in perspiration.
He could barely raise his right arm. He gritted his teeth and
managed to keep the butterfly net waving above his head,

141

repeatedly dislodging the fly from resting-places which it
tried to find on ceiling or walls.

Ninety minutes after the chase began, the fly plummeted
to the floor, its wings twitching uselessly. It dropped the
dummy micro-circuit, managed to crawl a few feet, then
stopped.

Clone pushed back his helmet, his face red and steamy-
looking. Floyd did the same. He saw the other man reverse
his butterfly net and delicately nudge the fly with the end
of the handle. The creature rolled over on its back, its legs
pointing stiffly upwards, immobile.

‘Not shamming, I don’t think,’ said Clone, giving the fly
another gentle nudge. There was no response.

Floyd took a pair of tweezers off the desk, very carefully
picked up the fly by one leg, and deposited it on a plastic
dish.

Floyd looked up from the microscope, his face showing
incredulity.

‘Astonishing.’

‘You have a look. Clone.’

The security man peered into the instrument.

‘So it is an artifact, as we thought.’

‘Yes, but look at the fantastic detail. It’s beyond belief.
Removing the casing is going to be tricky without damag-
ing the internal mechanism. But even from the outside you
can see how incredibly small they are working.’

Clone straightened up and gazed through the window
towards the Iota factory in the distance, its bulk shimmer-
ing grey and featureless through the haze.

‘What I don’t understand,’ he said slowly, ‘is why? If
they can work this small they must be several years ahead
of us in microminiaturisation.’

‘Ahead in some ways, yes.’ Floyd, out of loyalty to his
firm, was grudging. ‘They have Murdoch, who is an ac-

142

knowledged genius in the field. But he’s curiously unpre-
dictable and something of a prima donna.’

‘Obviously, he can deliver the goods.’

‘When a project interests him, he can. He’ll push things
ahead like wild fire. But he’s rather an unworldly person,
with something of a contempt for consumer preferences
and prejudices. The result is that their stuff doesn’t make
money, but ours does. They are simply driven to industrial
espionage and to copying our prototypes in order to keep a
reasonable share of the market.’

Clone nodded.

Floyd took another look through the microscope and in
spite of himself his face wrinkled into a smile of enthusiasm
and appreciation. ‘But one has to admire the way they’ve
gone about this.’

He kept peering into the microscope as he spoke. ‘My
guess is that the eyes operate as TV scanners. The device is
steered remotely — possibly by an operator in the lota fac-
tory itself. These long hairs are the radio antennae.’

‘The legs operate as a grab for carrying off specimens of
micro-circuitry?’

‘Yes. But even without doing that, lota can scan diagrams
and drawings with the TV eyes and reproduce them elec-
tronically in permanent form at the other end.’

The security man in Clone reasserted itself. ‘But this is
diabolical. Nothing is going to be safe with devices like this
around. The thing could get through a keyhole. . . .’

‘We’ll work out a reply. There is a defence against any
form of attack. And meanwhile. Iota have presented us here
with a very pretty specimen of their advanced thinking.’

Floyd inched the small joystick forward with thumb and
finger. On the TV screen in front of him the ground rushed
up in exploding perspective. The fly sailed into the picture,
a blurred, dancing, dark-grey spot.

H3

With small movements of the stick, Floyd locked on to
it. He followed its wild twistings and veerings unerringly.

At each turn the horizon tilted crazily sideways, left or
right, to near vertical. But the image of the fly, though it
swung and wobbled, never left Floyd’s screen. Despite its
speeding wingbeat, it grew steadily larger second by
second.

Once he almost lost it. That was when it buzzed against
the sheer face of a building. Floyd flicked the joystick side-
ways, as warning signals rang in his head. But the hours
spent flying the simulator paid off (he remembered Clone’s
grin getting more and more sardonic as the ‘write-offs’ had
piled up on the simulator scoreboard). He brushed a wiiig-
tip and no more.

Then there was no escape.

Floyd followed the fly in its twisting, erratic dive to
ground level. This one was doomed.

Now Floyd felt an exultant surge of anticipation as the
fly’s image loomed enormous on the screen. A moment later
an electronic note sounded. Floyd pushed the lever marked
‘Capture’. He exhaled a sigh of satisfaction and switched to
autopilot. Then, beaming round, he gave the thumbs-up sign
to colleagues seated at similar control desks on either side
of him. They were too busy with their own controls to take
much notice.

That was five already this morning.

Multiply that by thirty and at this rate even lota’s pro-
duction line was being strained to breaking point.

A hatch opened in the wall opposite and Floyd’s bird
fluttered in and alighted on the top of the control desk. The
wing action was good, but the wings did not fold when
they stopped beating. And instead of two eyes, the creature
had a single lens in the front of its head. Still, the overall
effect was what counted. From a distance, a passer-by
would have noticed nothing unusual.

144

Floyd jiggled a lever and the beak opened. Out fell the
fly, de-activated and safely encapsulated in a block of
transparent quick-setting resin. It looked like one of lota’s
standard models, but nevertheless Floyd consigned it to the
chute leading to the dissection laboratories. Just as well to
be on the safe side.

Now there was a welcome pause while Floyd’s bird got
its fuel cell recharged. He stretched himself comfortably in
the adjustable chair. Flight duration was only thirty min-
utes — though the boys in the back room were working on
this. But half an hour was ample to make a ‘kill’. His record
today was well up to average and it gave him a quiet satis-
faction to know that he was the company’s top-scoring
pilot. That helped to wipe the slate clean.

Relaxing over a cup of instant coffee, Floyd took time to
look round the windowless airconditioned control room.
Seated in rows were some thirty other pilots, mostly concen-
trating on their .TV panels, their faces tense with the ab-
sorption of the chase, or occasionally registering disgust as
the quarry eluded them.

Floyd switched his own TV to a general view of the scene
outside the building.

In the airspace between their territory and lota’s peri-
meter, the air was alive with the dark shapes of birds. With
the black scimitar wings of swifts, the yawning heak and
fish tail, and the single eye bulging in their foreheads, the
birds fluttered aloft and swept down in screaming dives.
Wheeling and turning, they dominated the air, hunting
lota’s spy-flies out of the sky.

145

SOME DREAMS COME IN PACKAGES
by

David Kyle

The dream, in this instance, was to get to the stars —
but a human being, at least in his present form, can-
not live long enough to complete the journey

SOME DREAMS COME IN PACKAGES

. . and it is henceforth prohibited to manufac-
ture, assemble, or operate, or otherwise engage in
experimentation with, such automatons and/or
robots, as have been specifically defined in the pre-
ceding paragraphs, within the political limits of the
Megalopolis of the Greater City of New York. . .

Bye-Law K-9786, City Council,

New York Megalopolis Charter,
Adopted, July i, 1988

The rocketship was travelling westwards, drawing a thin,
grey line of exhaust across the rich blue of the evening sky.
When it began to descend. Dr. Don VanGeorge moved back
towards the safety shelter at the northern edge of the roof,
careful not to lose sight of the blonde head of the girl. She
was down near the landing platform awaiting Robert’s
arrival.

Dr. Don VanGeorge was spying on the girl. He was a
rational, intelligent, middle-aged man, who had convinced
himself that he had to be a sneak and an eavesdropper for
her own good. He knew he was right, but he despised him-
self anyway.

As the ship lowered, whistling and humming and stirring
up the inevitable city dirt even a half mile above the
ground street, the girl moved indoors. At the corner of his
barrier, VanGeorge watched the dark ship slip down across
the background of the distant skyline. Off to his left was the

149

Brotherhood Building, the windows of its tower now
steadily creating tiers of light another three hundred feet
above the Science Building where he stood. He looked out
past the tower, towards the river, beyond the dark line of
the distant shore where the horizon was deepening from
yellow into orange. Farther off, like a spear, was the sil-
houette of the Humanity Tower, its tip ablaze in the last
rays of the hidden sun.

There was a short sudden silence which was obliterated
by the impact of the opening hatchway.

The girl, Helen, Professor Haines’ daughter, had walked
out alone, towards the unfolding stairway. VanGeorge
moved closer, behind a service door, to peer through its
narrow window. He saw Helen’s head lift and her tall body
straighten and then he saw what she was seeing.

On the top step a pair of shining black boots began their
descent, slowly bringing into view legs, then torso. The
cuffs of the man’s grey gabardine pantaloons were tucked
into his boot tops, and his laboratory blouse, crisply fresh,
was in turn tucked tightly into the broad belt which bound
his narrow waist. Above the top of his unbuttoned high
collar rode his head, erect on stiff neck. The flesh of his
angular face was firm, his brown hair neatly brushed,
and his eyes had the hot spark which turns stones into
gems.

VanGeorge instinctively held his breath. Helen hadn’t
seen Robert in nearly a year. How would she greet him ? As
friend? Or as beloved? Surely Robert must perceive her
fragile passion? And how would he handle the situation
without jeopardising his outrageous secret ?

It was not Helen who greeted Robert. It was Robert who
greeted Helen. He stepped down, with a sudden quickness,
and before she could realise what he was doing, had lifted
her high in the air with his broad hands around her waist.

VanGeorge saw that she was laughing, kicking her legs
playfully, emotionally on the verge of tears.

Moments later they had disappeared through the ter-
minal doors and VanGeorge did not hurry to follow. He
looked at the glow in the west. The sky was purple now,
with the evening star twinkling coldly to the left of the
dark shadow of the Humanity Tower. Above the Tower
was the full face of the moon. A shimmering blue-white
ghost, brilliant, casting a pale sheet of light over the city.
He had confirmed the truth : Helen loved Robert.

When Don VanGeorge arrived at his office a few minutes
later twenty floors under the roof he hadn’t seen the couple
anywhere in the Cybernetics Department of Division, but
he had noticed the significance of the closed door to Helen’s
office. He had never seen that door closed before. With a
heightening sense of repugnance he made a quick decision,
shut his own door, and switched on his intercom into her
office. He activated only the sound, not the picture, so there
would be no small warning light nor buzz in the other
room. He sat down, putting a candy mint in his mouth, and
listened.

‘Of course I missed you.’ That was Robert’s voice. Reson-
ant yet quiet, a monotone which nevertheless conveyed the
nuances of his thoughts and feelings, a thoroughly remark-
able voice, thought VanGeorge, considering who Robert
really was.

‘I must ask that, Robert.’ Helen’s voice, although femi-
nine, had that same quiet quality of the intellectual mind in
the mature body which underscored every word. This past
year has been very lonely for me. My feelings for you have
deepened.’

‘Although I know it’s true — for both of us — we cannot
admit it, Helen. Not even to ourselves.’

‘But why not ? I’m not thinking of the future. I’m think-

151

ing of the past. Our past. That can’t hurt the precious pro-
ject. . . .’

‘We must, nevertheless, think of the future. Your future.
And your father’s. Time for personal dreams is gone.’ There
was a long pause.

‘It’s settled, then. You are making the trip ! ’

‘So . . . Your father told you at last . . . Now you under-
stand.’

VanGeorge clearly heard Helen’s involuntary sob. .

‘You’ll never survive. Everyone knows that. You’ll be the
first, and the first man will never come back. Oh, 1 know it
sounds as though I’m talking against the whole project but
it’s the truth and I can’t help myself. I don’t want you to go
out into space and die. I know I shouldn’t think of the
future, but I love you too much. There! It’s said! I love
you ! Nothing else really matters.’

‘I must go, Helen. You know that.’

‘Not without a chance! Must you sacrifice yourself?
We’re not savages! Let a machine do it! Hold me, Robert,
hold me ! ’

VanGeorge heard swishing of clothes, the squeaking of
Robert’s plastic boots on the polished floor, the sounds of
bodies embracing. He had heard enough. The reality was
obscene. A pretty, human female was in love with a hand-
some, inhuman robot !

VanGeorge savagely clicked off the intercom switch, his
extreme indignation tempered by embarrassment. He
cursed himself for his self-righteousness and banged around
the room. ‘For God’s sake,’ he said aloud, with bitterness, ‘is
the star trip worth it? Robert’s too valuable! Helen’s too
involved! She’s tmhappy! I’m unhappy! Even Robert
the Robot is unhappy! And we call ourselves The
Happy Society! Let’s get on with the whole bloody
mess . . . ! ’

He stormed out of the room and in front of Helen’s door

152

he knocked loudly. ‘We’re due at the meeting! Are you
ready?’

In the hall, when the two came out, he miade his greeting
to Robert as warm as possible, which wasn’t difficult be-
cause he really liked Robert very much despite what he
was. Damn it all, Robert was practically human — Helen
was a mature woman with superior brains — ^what the hell
was he, VanGeorge, so upset about when the melodrama
would be over in a couple of hours ? Besides, he suddenly
had to concede, perhaps Professor Haines had exaggerated !
No conclusive proof had ever been demonstrated — ^Robert
could be just a re-built human being, a sophisticated re-
vivification, instead of a robot ! Maybe. Just maybe.

‘Look, Doctor,’ Helen was saying enthusiastically, as they
made their way down the elevator towards the meeting
room, ‘see what Robert has brought for me I ’ She held up a
large loose-leaf binder, thick with pages and insertions.
‘He’s given me a whole year ! The things he wanted to share
with me while we weren’t together he’s put in this. And
he’s made little drawings and he’s written all kinds of
appropriate sentiments, the pages even have just the right
colours and aromas and with talking photographs and stress
plates with musical selections. A whole world we shared
together while we were apart.’ All the time she was turning
over pages, pointing at the details with delight and laughing
excitedly.

‘How thdhghtful ! ’ VanGeorge said. ‘I’ve always thought
personal communication should utilise the art of the col-
lage.’ Helen was soaking up his comments, yearning for
exuberant affirmation of her own feelings. He had to give
her more. ‘Robert has always been an artist at thoughtful-
ness. Yes, he’s very clever.’

Robert didn’t seem embarrassed by Helen’s adolescent
fervency. His eyes were wide and blue and inscrutable. He

153 .

kept straightening his tunic and flattening the lines of his
pantaloons at his waist and thighs and touching fastidiously
the buttoned top of his collar where it brushed his chin.
Although Helen chattered away merrily, Robert kept to his
usual taciturnity, and VanGeorge could see that they were
both troubled. There was a strain between them all and it
was growing, almost in direct ratio to the rapid approach
of the conference so as to suggest the rupture would un-
avoidably come then. He could understand Helen^ — she was
a woman. Especially she was an unmarried woman who
was maternal and who had been practically a sister to
Robert — even a mother. As for Robert, VanGeorge had
found him bewildering until Doctor Haines himself had ex-
plained, although the explanation in many ways confused
instead of clarified the situation. Ten years ago Robert had
been shy and sensitive, yet utterly self-controlled. Last year
he had begun to show an emotional breakdown and the
doctor had been forced to continue Robert’s training among
the scientists and technicians of the impersonal research
facilities of Aerospace Dynamics. With his departure
everyone had seemed helped — recognising at the same time
that nothing had been changed or cured and that the day
was coming when they would all be facing their personal
relationships again under the most extreme of circum-
stances.

They entered the elevator and dropped seventy stories in
silence. At the Communications Level they walked across
the marble floor to the private elevator to the personal
laboratory of the head of the department, virtually the
home of Doctor Haines for the past twenty years.

As they were going up, VanGeorge decided to ease the
tension of silence which had enveloped them and at the
same time prepare them for the ordeal which was to come.

‘Well, what we’ve been preparing for is almost here. Ten
years for me. Seven, for the newest member of the team.

154

Over two decades for your father, Helen. ’Sheen a long
time. And all during that time we’ve had our eyes fixed on
our one goal — the starship.’ That wasn’t exactly a lie. After
all, however important Robert had been over the years he
had always been part of the starship experiment. ‘Robert
has always been an important part of our plans, we all
know that, but now he is the most important part. Every-
thing we do must go towards his success.’

Helen’s transient light-heartedness faded away to solem-
nity.

They walked out into the white corridor, down the hall,
and into the outer-room of the cybernetics department.
Brockton and Doctor Haines were sunk in the soft contour
chairs, talking. They looked up when the three of them
entered, Brockton at Helen and the doctor at Robert.

The room was large, a huge window in the far wall fram-
ing the view of the city. The indirect lighting cast no
shadows on the department apparatus and filing cabinets
lining the left wall, nor any highlights on the metal bodies
of the robots on racks along the right wall. The only bright
and lively colours in the room came from Helen’s low-
walled cubicle. There on her desk, next to her unfinished
portrait of Robert, was the vase of perma-fixed flowers he
had sent to her a month ago. VanGeorge looked at the
painting on its aluminium easel, seeing more clearly now
how impassionately she had limned the face and eyes to the
neglect of all other features.

Brockton was flashing his famous smile at Helen as the
three of them sat down, Robert next to her on a couch,
close but not touching, Brockton’s lean, browned face was
pleasant, yet it had a trace of worry, VanGeorge felt, and
the man’s muscular fingers were drumming nervously
against his bare knees which thrust themselves out of the
starched khaki shorts. Despite there never having been a
romance between Brockton and Helen, that handsome

155

egoist had always treated her like a possessive guardian or a
condescending husband. Perhaps the reason was that he
simply didn’t know how to express his genuine concern and
affection.

Dr. Haines had stepped back away from Robert after his
soft, intense private words of greeting and had taken a limp
leather notebook from the breast pocket of his tunic and
was thumbing through it. He found his place and looked up
seriously at Robert. ‘I haven’t seen you in a week,’ he said.
‘1 suppose Helen has warned you not to go.’ His small
brown goatee jutted out belligerently, but his eyes were
warm with affection.

Robert didn’t reply immediately, so Helen said, ‘Yes.
What you propose is inhuman.’

Brockton made a gurgling noise and VanGeorge had an
overwhelming impulse to break out in some fierce sardonic
laughter. Helen was so incredibly, stupidly naive — he was
doing right to try to protect her. ‘How did you find out?’
Brockton added with heavy irony in his tone. Whemboth
VanGeorge and Dr. Haines looked at him sharply, he said,
'I’m sorry, I shouldn’t be here. This is a family affair, sort
of, so if you’d like Don and me to leave we will certainly
understand.’ Don VanGeorge, mildly startled, could only
nod his agreement.

‘Of course not,’ Dr. Haines said, mildly.

‘Nonsense, Brock,’ Helen said simultaneously. Tou and
Doctor Don are part of the family too. I’ve known all along
what Robert’s role would be. It’s just that now the time has
come 1 don’t think it’s a good idea.’

‘I’m . . . sorry. Very sorry,’ Brockton said and shifted his
glance to Robert. There was a compassionate sincerity to
his words which was immensely depressing.

Dr. Haines said, ‘The only thing we’re here to discuss is
the flight, that’s all. not Robert.’

‘Well, then. Dad, that’s the trouble,’ Helen said, ‘I think

156

you should recognise you’ve put Robert in the position
after all these years of not being able to say “no”. We all
know there are doubts about the wisdom of the project.
Why do we have to have such secrecy? We’ve lived with
the idea so long we don’t realise how fantastic it is.’

‘You’re right, Helen! Absolutely! This is the last chance
to avoid failure!’ Brockton was looking directly at Dr.
Haines as he spoke. This is the last chance for second
thoughts. I’m willing and anxious to go — no matter how
poor my survival chances seem.’

‘I suppose it still seems daring to you, Helen,’ her father
said, ‘even after you’ve worked with us. But can you really
call it fantastic?’

‘A trip to the stars?’ she replied. ‘I should think so ! ’

‘Not just a trip to the stars, my dear,’ he said, running his
long fingers through thick brown hair, — an interstellar
ship with a pilot.’

‘But . . . It’s too early for a manned-ship flight. Every re-
search bears that out. The trip will take a lifetime. The pilot
is certain to die.'

Brockton said, ‘Oh ! ’ so explosively that they all frowned
and looked at him quizzically. He shut his mouth firmly
and flushed and looked at the floor. How he had ever kept
Robert’s secret from her in the last few years was beyond
VanGeorge’s understanding.

Dr. Haines was sadly displeased with Helen. He tapped
his notebook, cleared his throat and said, ‘I know you’re
my daughter, Helen, but you’re strictly my secretarial assist-
ant here in cybernetics. All factors are carefully calculated
in our plans and you know this. We cannot afford senti-
ment.’ He clenched and unclenched his jaws. ‘Robert can
always change his mind. I’m sure Brock will be ready, but
the schedule calls for Robert to leave by eleven o’clock to-
night. As we know, the starship has been in a parking orbit
around the moon for a week.’

157

‘I know you don’t think sentiment belongs in this place.’
Helen’s face was white, but her voice was unchanged.
‘Someone has to think that way about Robert.’

Brockton ponderously cleared his throat. ‘You mustn’t!’
he said. It was a command.

‘You can’t order me what not to feel. Brock ! ’

Brock’s reply was almost a whisper. ‘And what do you
feel, Helen? Is it love?’ The silence was harsh and agonising
to VanGeorge. He hardly dared to breathe. Brockton leaned
across the way and took Helen’s shoulders in his big hands.
‘Is it love?’ he repeated. He shook her slightly, so that her
body quivered under the loose, thin folds of her blouse.
Then he pushed her away from him and stared at Robert
who sat unmoving on the couch. There wasn’t a single
wrinkle line on Robert’s youthful face, only his eyes,
round and brilliant, had life.

‘You, Helen,’ Brockton said. ‘You love that?’

Robert’s eyebrows went slowly up, bending into two per-
fect arcs and pinching the skin of his forehead into three
long lines. He rose from the couch, lean and wiry, gazing
up at Brockton who had also risen and was a foot taller.

‘Don’t lose your temper. Brock.’

‘I’m disgusted, Robert. Disgusted and revolted. Why
didn’t you tell her?’ Brockton reached out quickly, grasping
Robert’s left ear, and seemed to try to tear it off his head.

Robert knocked up Brockton’s arm and stepped back.
When Helen stood beside Robert and sympathetically made
a caressing gesture over Robert’s violated ear, Brockton was
infuriated and swung his fist at Robert’s jaw. Robert dodged
and with his own open right hand pushed Brockton’s head
back so violently that the man crashed against the couch
and flipped over it to the floor.

Before Brockton could get up, VanGeorge pulled Robert
into the next room, Helen right behind.

158

‘I’m sorry. Doctor Don,’ Robert said.

‘It wasn’t your fault,’ the older man replied.

‘1 have to tell her, Don. She has to know and it has to be
me to tell her.’

When VanGeorge didn’t reply, Robert turned to her.
VanGeorge looked at the row of M -5 robots standing
against the far wall.

‘Helen, you do not love me.’ A weird rattle distorted his
voice. She swung her eyes nervously across his face.

‘Helen, you must not love me.’ His hands were moving
back and forth as though he had no control over them.

‘Helen, I like you.’ His hands continued their aimless
rhythm, back and forth, and she seemed hypnotised and
dumb,

‘Helen, as much as possible, 1 care for you. But, ah,
there’s a conflict point, we’ve got to consider, the homeo-
stasis, the ontogenetic, that is, my training, ah.’ The rattle
was in his voice again. He stopped moving, awkwardly
holding his arms in place as if paralysed.

He began again." ‘1 have always been truthful. . . .’

Dr. Don VanGeorge began to have some second thoughts.
At first he had believed that Helen should be told. He had
always believed, right back at the start, years ago when he
had met Robert, that Helen should not have been the only
one forbidden the knowledge. She, of all of them, should
not have been deceived. But now, in the last few seconds,
VanGeorge was suddenly unsure; there would only be
another twelve hours. Robert could leave. Helen would
better bear the tragic role of frustrated lover than of out-
raged simpleton,

‘Helen, you must suspect the truth ’ Robert lowered

his hands stiffly to his belt and hooked them there. ‘Surely
you must know.’ He paused and turned his head away from
her. ‘It’s nothing new. You’ve worked here. You know your
father. Cybernetics. Professor Haines has progressed far

159

since the days of Wiener of MIT and Aiken of Harvard. I
don’t have to explain cybernetics to you, do I?’

She shut her eyes. Behind VanGeorge’s back he could feel
the presence of the rows of de-activated robots, which to
Helen must have suddenly become grotesque blurs of pol-
ished metal.

‘Just one moment, Robert,’ VanGeorge said. ‘You’re leav-
ing in a matter of hours. Do you think you should go into
this?’

‘Please, Doctor VanGeorge,’ Helen said. 'Let Robert say
what he feels he must say.’ She squared her shoulders. ‘I
know this laboratory. I know my father has built many
servo-mechanisms. I remember them all as stiff, mechanical
curiosities. But that was years ago. Before the rules of
1988.’

‘It was their strikingly human characteristics that caused
the reaction, Helen,’ Robert said. ‘They disrupted the city.
Laws were passed — no more experimenting with robots in
the city limits. Theoretical experiments, yes, but no more
free-will automatons were permitted here.’ Robert paused
and looked at her expectantly.

‘Why of course ! ’ Helen said. She was suddenly excited
and she grasped Robert’s right hand in her own. ‘You’ve
been here all along. What a horrible thought I had — what a
fright you’ve given me.’

Robert’s eyes were hot and glittering. He said firmly, ‘I
am your father’s secret exception.’

VanGeorge felt muscles all over his body jerking under
the flood of emotion which swept like a hot wave through
him. He avoided looking directly at the couple because he
knew he would betray his embarrassment for them. He
noticed that Helen had involuntarily dropped Robert’s
hand.

That’s why such effort was taken to make me look
like — like a human being,’ Robert said without bitterness.

160

There was silence. VanGeorge could imagine that the
girl’s heart had frozen and shattered within her and that the
pieces would be falling like snow into the pit of her
stomach. As the substitute father he had become to her, as
the chance replacement for her own hardworking and
dedicated father, he now felt more sorry for her than he had
ever felt.

‘Do you understand?’

When VanGeorge looked up, Robert was devoting his
entire attention to her. Helen tried to nod. Tears had begun
to creep down her reddened cheeks. She tried to speak.
Deep, wracking sobs came instead. Then she managed to
say in a tiny voice, pretending a sudden objective indiffer-
ence, ‘So that’s why you’re called Robert. Not much imagi-
nation there. You could have been named Phil, after phylo-
genetics. That would have been cleverer.’

She started to laugh hysterically and stopped it quickly in
order to cry out, ‘I don’t believe you ! ’

‘Nevertheless, 1 am.’ His hands began to move aimlessly
again.

‘You have a human mind. You have a human brain. You
wouldn’t lie about that ! ’

‘No,’ he said. He shut his eyelids. VanGeorge, in his daze,
could only think: does she realise that he rarely blinks?
Wasn’t that one of the flaws — one of the inconspicuous
flaws in his masquerade ?

‘I do not have a human mind, Helen,’ he continued softly.
‘Somewhat organic, but not human. But I do have human
behaviour. I am very nearly a pure, psychological product
of environment.’

‘One of my father’s mechanical children,’ she whispered.
She closed her eyes too. ‘Once I squandered a week’s salary
on perfume to please you.’

‘Not his child,’ Robert said, ‘his alter-ego.’

‘No!’ Helen was crushing VanGeorge’s right arm in her

i6i

fingers. ‘I don’t believe it! You’re saying this because of the
star trip. You can’t be’ — and she flung out a pointing hand
at the row of robots — ‘one of those I ’

Robert smiled a stiff smile. ‘They’re my grandparents, not
my brothers. Do you want proof?’ He picked up a stool
and in an instant had driven his fist through the thin metal
seat. They saw the deep scratches on his hand but the blood
did not come.

‘I know you’re strong, Robert,’ she said. ‘You’ve hurt
your hand.’

Robert’s visage was strangely contorted. ‘More proof?
Shall I give you a Brockton type of demonstration?’ he
asked and reached his hand up towards his face.

‘No!’ Helen screamed and collapsed into VanGeorge’s
arms.

For a moment the doctor and the astronaut stood there,
unmoving, looking at the unconscious girl.

‘Do you think you should have told her?’ VanGeorge said
helplessly.

‘Yes,’ Robert said. ‘She can’t love me. It would be terribly
wrong.’

‘I suppose so,’ said VanGeorge. He started to stretch her
out on the couch. ‘You go tell her father what happened. I’ll
take care of her.’

Robert turned on his squeaking heels and stalked from
the room.

For a long time VanGeorge sat on a chair by Helen’s side,
letting her sleep, his own head held in his hands, thinking
inconsequential, repetitious thoughts.

They both were in the same positions when Dr. Haines
came into the room.

Thank you, Don,’ the professor said. ‘Don’t worry about
Helen. She’s all right. I know she is. We’ve only minutes
ahead of us and we can’t discuss this calamity now. Robert
is all right, too. I’m positive. I’ve continually stressed the

162

need that he must be clear-headed during the entire five
hundred and twenty days of acceleration, that’s for nearly
two years, each and every twenty-four hours. He’ll sur-
mount this crisis. In fact, he may be better for it. Don’t
worry about Helen. Many human beings have affection for
inhuman beings.’

Robert had entered the room suddenly and the men knew
that he heard the doctor’s final remark.

Dr. Haines said briskly, ‘She’s all right, Robert. There’s no
need to be distraught or distracted — remember, the photon-
drive is radically different, hazardous, and untested. There
can be no mistakes.’

‘Don’t worry. Doctor,’ Robert said. ‘Goodbye, Doctor
VanGeorge.’ They shook hands formally and firmly. ‘And
thank you — sincerely.’ He broke away with a sudden touch
of shyness. He looked at Dr. Haines. ‘Am I a being. Doctor?
Am I living? Where does a living being begin and mere
machinery leave off ? ’

Dr. Haines’ eyes were momentarily sad. ‘I don’t know,
Robert. Most people describe it simply as a soul.’

_God-given, VanGeorge thought to himself. There’s the in-
comprehensibility.

‘Does a dog have a soul?’

‘I don’t know.’ Dr. Haines let his breath out in an audible
sigh. ‘Perhaps. Perhaps you do, too, Robert. There is no
clear-cut truth.’

‘Truth is elusive,’ Robert said, ‘yet people die for
it. Perhaps some day mankind will know complete
truth.’

‘Perhaps, Robert.’

‘If you’ll permit me, both of you — let me express myself
with a quotation. “Howbeit when he, the Spirit of truth, is
come, he will guide you into all truth : for he shall not speak
of himself; but whatsoever he shall hear, that shall he speak r
and he will show you things to come.” ’

163

Dr. Haines’ lined, tired face was faintly curious. ‘That’s
the Bible, 1 suppose, Robert?’

Robert nodded. ‘St. John, sixteenth chapter, thirteenth
verse.’ He smiled. ‘When 1 get back in a hundred years I’ll
quote Shakespeare. I’ve a lot of reading to do — and I’ll have
the time. You know, humans spend all that time sleeping
when they could be reading.’

Robert shook Dr. Haines’ hand quickly and stepped back.
‘Goodbye, Doctor,’ he said simply.

The older man moved forward and put his hand on
Robert’s shoulder. ‘You must succeed, Robert — you’re a
dear, dear friend.’

Robert put his hand on top of the other’s. Without any
emotion he said, ‘I will succeed. Doctor— you’re my father.’

Robert quickly strode to the couch and bent and kissed
Helen on the forehead. ‘Tell her what I did, please. You see,
the truth is that I do love Helen.’

Then Robert was disappearing out the door.

Helen was struggling to lift herself off the couch, crying
out, ‘Godspeed, Robert!’ But he didn’t hear because he was
already gone.

‘You should have told him. Father,’ she said, as Van-
George helped her to sit erect. ‘You should have told him
who I really am.’

VanGeorge looked in bewilderment at his chief, sensing
the deep mystery behind her words, and saw the man’s face
melting into agony.

‘It’s not too late. Father,’ she said. ‘Let me go with him.’

‘Impossible — the ship’s not equipped.’

‘It could be, easily. There’s still time for the contingency
plan, to put in Brock’s equipment,’

‘You forget, my dear, you’d die out of contact with your
brain.’

‘Not all of me. Father.’ Helen’s voice sounded heavily
ironic. ‘Just this me would die. Maybe not even then. May-

164

be this one of me would live for a long time. And I could
help Robert for the crucial first phase. After that, why
worry? I’ll die and still exist to live again.’

‘Don’t torture us both, Helen. The idea’s impractical and
foolhardy. You know it is. It simply can’t be done.’

‘I know/ Helen said. ‘You’re right.’ She gave a little
shrug. ‘I’m disconnecting. Father.’ Her voice was flat now.
‘Maybe for ever.’ Then she crumpled into VanGeorge’s arms
as if dead.

Incredibly, her father ignored her, the professor spinning
on his heel and rushing from the room.

VanGeorge, in a daze, snatched the girl’s wrist in his
fingers and bent his ear to her chest. When he was certain
she was alive he made her body comfortable on the couch.
As he started to summon help. Dr. Haines’ voice issued out
of VanGeorge’s personal communicator under his left shirt-
cuff.

‘Don? Helen’s all right.’ The words were without emo-
tion. ‘Come into my private lab.’

During the few minutes it took VanGeorge to get there,
his mind was muddled into stupefaction by innumerable
unanswered questions. Then he was standing in front of Dr.
Haines, staring vapidly into his face. The horror that had
recently crawled across the doctor’s face had given way to
intense anguish.

‘For God’s sake, Don,’ Dr. Haines said, ‘give me your
advice! I’ve only a few minutes before Robert’s gone —
should I admit to him that he’s partly human ? He’s part of
me, because he’s part of my daughter. His bits of organic
matter came from her brain.’

‘What?’ VanGeorge was incredulous, his skull exploding
with the thought: no wonder Robert and Helen felt so
deeply towards each other ! The relationship was staggering
— and grotesque 1 The thought showed in his face because
Dr. Haines said quickly, ‘It’s a misleading truth, you know,’

165

and gently pulled him through the red security door. Only
twice before, in all the ten years of their professional rela-
tionship, had VanGeorge been through that private door-
way into the secluded inner room. There, in a console of
closed circuit television, a monitor pictured a complex glass
and metal case. Inside was a human figure. The unfamiliar
object to VanGeorge’s eye took on the appearance of an
electronic coffin with a corpse.

Then VanGeorge almost cried out at the recognition of
the form inside the cubicle. He had to grasp Dr. Haines’ arm
to keep his balance from the sudden dizziness. The human
figure was, unbelievably, a bizarre representation of Helen
Haines, half-mummified, lying in a bed of gadgets, veiled by
a network of a thousand glittering wire strands. Peaceful,
though, somehow like a nearly naked, pink and skinny
child in a magic bed.

‘Helen?’

‘Yes, Helen.’ The professor’s words hung within Van-
George’s head like the stifling pall of smoke from a burst
bomb.

Dr. Haines punched a button and another monitor
flickered into colour to show Helen back on the couch just
as VanGeorge had left her. ‘And there, also, on the couch,’
Dr. Haines said. That’s also Helen.’

‘Two? Two Helens?’

‘Yes, although actually that young girl’s body is Helen’s
telefactor — a living telefactor — her personal marionette.’

‘A telefactor?’ VanGeorge said, stunned almost into in-
coherence. ‘An image of your daughter. Another robot?’

‘Not a robot. Alive. Grown in the lab from her own cells.
Her own blueprint faithfully self-copied. Not just a regener-
ated organ or two, but an entire organism. Just as she was
and would’ve been.’

‘But the other? The — the sleeping Helen . . .?’

Tucked away safely in a room down in the lower levels.

i66

She's lain there for over fifteen years.’ The professor’s
goatee exaggerated the sudden emotional trembling of his
chin and his eyelashes wetly darkened with tears. ‘Her use-
less body has wasted away, but not her brain. She can exist
there like that for ever;’

‘You didn’t — you didn’t ’ VanGeorge tried to say,

‘You — ^your own daughter— you didn’t experiment V

‘Another secret experiment? Another secret exception?
Not deliberately, but in desperation. Twenty years ago
Helen should have died. I froze her body alive, although
only her head was essential. For another body 1 preferred
flesh and blood, so I cultured another container. 1 didn’t
want my daughter to be a cyborg — more machine than
human being. At first I thought of taping her mind for re-
recording in the baby’s brain. But I had to wait for the
baby’s physical development. Then I thought of a brain
transfer. Finally 1 took the safest way, and the simplest — 1
linked the old brain with the new by electrodynamics. The
mature mind easily dominated the fresh brain. So much so
that the refabricated Helen is virtually independent and the
original Helen is mentally quiescent. She’s forty-two, but
her fifteen-year-old body has matured at twice its normal
rate.’

‘Fifteen?’ VanGeorge said, astonished. ‘The beautiful
young lady 1 met years ago was only eight or nine?’

‘You thought she was a precocious teen-ager?’ Dr. Haines
permitted himself a sad smile. ‘She’s a mature young
woman with her mind and soul full of life. Her exceptional
life must not be wasted.’

‘You think Helen would be wasted on Robert?’ Van-
George decided to answer his own question. ‘1 think she’s
mature enough to make her own decisions.’

‘Yes, but she’s entirely human. I don’t know what Robert
is. She is a very successful, if radical, medical technique for
individual preservation. She’s even more than that. Robert

167

is humanoid, not human — the origin of his organic matter
is of no importance. The miniscule few thousand cells from
Helen was simply easier than synthesis.’ The professor
paused, tightening the muscles around his mouth. ‘But
you’re right,’ he said at last. ‘Helen should know all the
facts and make the decisions. Somehow, and she too has
discovered this, Robert is not less than human, but more
than human.’

‘Then tell your daughter before it’s too late.’

The two men looked at the monitors. In one was the
young girl, by now surrounded by anxious medical tech-
nicians. In the other was the woman into whom was woven
the artificial life-sustainers, the machines serving her and
responding to her and responding for her, an apparatus
with a real human soul. It was to that woman that the
father spoke :

‘I will play back a conversation which Dr. Don and I
have just had, Helen. Then we will do what you ask.’

While Dr. Haines adjusted the equipment, VanGeorge
said, ‘Have you considered. Professor, the consequences of
all this experimentation? You’re altering Mankind’s billion-
year-old evolutionary pattern. You’re forcing us across the
threshold of tomorrow. Our world, our galaxy, even the
universe, will be irrevocably changed.’

For the first time. Dr. Haines sat down on a stool and
gestured his friend towards another.

‘Yes, I’ve thought a great deal about that, Don,’ he said.
‘Perhaps that’s my actual purpose in the great scheme of
things. Perhaps that’s why Man has evolved in his unique
way. To be the father and mother and midwife to the
creation, evolution and eventual ascendancy of the think-
ing, feeling machine.’

From the first monitor there came an emergency warning
buzz. Dr. Haines switched on the two-way soundpicture. A
technician’s ghastly face filled the camera and blurted out,

i68

‘My God, Doctor, Helen’s heart has stopped. There are all
the symptoms of permanent death ! ’

Suddenly from the second monitor came a spoken mess-
age reconstituted from the library of sounds of young
Helen’s voice. Almost natural, almost human. ‘There is only
me now, Dad ! Only the true identity which is Helen ! Tell
Robert I will wait for him. Tell him I’ll be here, the Helen
whom he loves, a hundred years from now ! ’

VanGeorge looked at the Helen-thing.

Some day, if he were lucky and could live that long, he
would help raise another young Helen to greet Robert, in
the flesh, on his return home.

169

DJANGO MAVERICK: 2051
by

Grahame Leman

New writer to our pages, Grahame Leman states that
philosophically he is a profoundly sceptical human-
ist (wary of scientism and bigness in any form),
quite sure that it is an offence to be ideologically
drunk in charge of spaceship Earth or any module
thereof. His story herewith needs no further intro-
duction.

DJANGO MAVERICK; 2051

Murray Jenkins, Chairman and President of the Board of
Tellus Publishing, sat ceremoniously down in his own seat
in the executive viewing room, and the other members of
the board then allowed themselves to sit down in order of
seniority. Jenkins was comforted, as he usually was, by the
acrid smell of fear in the darkened air. But on this occasion,
he found, he was not comforted enough : slipping off his
silver wig of office and parking it on his knee, he felt for the
implanted socket above his right ear and plugged in the
connector of his feeling aid, skilled fingers on the familiar
wheels of the case in his breast pocket cutting his Drive and
boosting his Aplomb.

On his left. Ran Wade decorously removed his own,
brown Vice-Presidential wig: with a comforting sense of
superiority, Jenkins noticed the implanted lump under his
skin of the standard Medicare feeling control receiver ; all
persons (if you could call them that) of four-star or lower
rating were fitted with these from birth; they were under
the control of broadcast transmissions from the Govern-
ment and of the overriding short-range transmitters carried
by all five-star men and women (the real people, you might
say); and there were only three settings — neutral (open to
symbolic communication), plus (ecstatic joy), and minus
(indescribable Angst). He also noticed that the upper part of
young Wade’s head was shadowed with fuzz.

‘Wade,’ he said sharply : ‘You’ve not shaved this morn-
ing. Ain’t respectful.’

173

‘Yes, sir. Up all night, and working to the last minute to
get this presentation set up for you. You taught me your-
self, sir, profitability trumps even propriety in emergencies.’
"F you weren’t the only trouble-shooter here who ever
shot any trouble. I’d not believe any emergency could be
that hot. Must be the first time in the history of publishing,
somebody tells the chief exec of the leading house he’s
gotta believe he’s gotta hire a certified crazy and grade-
labelled bent. How you goin’ sell me that, boy ?’

Wade waved at the screen in front of them, which
immediately began to show, first a fine-grain scanning
raster, then the title (set in Playbill) ‘Django Maverick:
2023.’

‘You understand, sir,’ Wade whispered, ‘we have no live
recordings of Maverick’s past: this is a reconstruction,
played by actors; but as near true as any reconstruction of
the past can be; we can base policy on it.’

With a brisk, crisp snap of snare drum, the screen
showed a school learning room, early twenty-first-century
decor, seen from the back, high on the right : a hundred
children are hunched over their individualised teaching
machines, earphones on; the group teaching screen at the
far end of the room (screen deep) is blank. One child’s head
(screen left, high corner) turns, and the editor pounces in to
a choker close-up of part of a child’s grubby, tear-stained
face, then freezes. Voice over freeze : ‘It all began when a
child began to think.’ Cuts home to the learning room (as
before) : the teaching screen lights up; a woman’s face
appears on the teaching screen, says, ‘731 Maverick, at once
to the Head Programmer’s room.’

In a large office, his back to the camera, a small boy is
standing in front of a desk; behind the desk, a seated man,
fifty-ish, silver hair, and opium pipe; standing at his shoul-
der, a woman in glasses; behind them a whole wall of com-
puter Ins and Outs, very antiquated (push button input and

174

monochrome view out), typical of a lower quartile urban
school in the early twenty-first century.

‘Look, Maverick,’ the man says, ‘you’re here to be trained
to do it the way it’s done. The big teacher doesn’t want the
answers to the problems, it wants to see you arrive at the
answers the right way, the way everybody else does. If you
do things different, you know, you won’t get work when
you have to leave here, because you won’t be able to do the
work there is along with the people there are.’

The boy answers : ‘But it takes so long to figure that way,
with only two different marks for the numbers. Look’ (he
says, holding up his hands), ‘I have ten marks for numbers,
one for each finger : I call them Al, Bill, Charlie, Dave,
Ernie, Fred, George, Harry, Ike, and Nobody; I write them
A, B, C, D, E, F, G, H, I, and O for an empty hole. It doesn’t
take so much space to write as the big teacher’s way, and I
can do the sums quicker (even in my head) than the big
teacher can.’

The woman smiles : ‘Yes, Maverick. And you do get the
answers right : what I mean, we know you get the answers
right, because big teacher sets problems with answers he
knows. But when you go out to work, it’s different : people
don’t know the answers to sums about real things until
alter they have been worked; so if somebody wants to be
sure that you have worked a sum right, he can only tell by
checking through the way you did it; and if you did it a
funny way, he wouldn’t be able to know you were right,
even when you were. See ?’

The boy’s back stiffens : ‘No. Why act dumb, when
you’re smart? Why do things the hard way, when there’s
an easy way?’

The man, gruffly now : ‘You aren’t smart. Maverick : the
tests say you’re not smart; if you were smart, the tests
would have shown it, and you wouldn’t be here — you’d be
in one of the creative conformity schools the big corpora-

175

tions run for the flyers, the people they want to own when
they’re grown.’

The boy goes forward away from the camera on to the
desk-top, flailing with small fists at the pink face, the silver
hair, snatching the opium pipe and throwing it in the
woman’s face. An alarm hell begins to ring, shaking the
whole world. A policeman in period flak-jacket and riot
helmet slips swiftly in from screen right : the boy is soon
enclosed in the police net, injected with the usual sedative,
and carried off screen left (like a load of Christmas presents)
on the policeman’s bent back.

The woman drops her hand on the man’s shoulder : ‘You
shouldn’t have done that. Hero; shouldn’t provoke a one-
star boy to hit a three-star man : for that, they have to put
him in a change tank.’

‘Where else can he go, Della ? He isn’t plastic : probably
the one who did his plasticity rating test had been crossed
in love the day before, or something, and the kid slipped
into a regular school when he should have been in a change
tank all along. My job is to make the normal conformal,
not to do hospital work with crazy kids. Is it, now?’

‘S’pose so. Come to think, a change tank may be best for
him after all. He’d soon have to leave here, and then he’d
never get work; not honest work, only in the criminal
gangs. And then, in the change tanks they don’t bother
what you think or what you feel, so long as you keep your
nose and your cell clean : they’re supposed to reform
people, or re-educate them, or cure them, or something, but
they haven’t got the staff; the change tanks aren’t so differ-
ent from the old prisons as we like to think and are
supposed to say. Whereas on the outside you have to think
right and feel right or else.’

‘Right, Della : close the file. Dinner tonight?’

‘Mmmmm ! ’

The screen faded to a black blank. Murray Jenkins had

176

pointedly replaced his silver wig of office; the other execu-
tives, noticing this now, hastily put back their own brown,
blond, black, and red wigs of office, each according to his
station.

A new title appeared on the screen (in Grotesque sans
eight): ‘Django Maverick: 2031.’ A scowling young man
is hustled past and down a corridor, by a couple of heavy
change-tank therapists in the usual fibre-glass armour. A
third follows, carrying some things that look very like, but
not quite like, a mop and pail. They all disappear through a
door at the far end (screen deep) of the corridor. Now the
young man, his two therapists, and the third other man are
standing with their backs half to camera in an office. Facing
them sternly, from his chair behind a desk, is a gross, silver-
wig man with a big, black sink-brush moustache, wearing a
short white coat; behind him, a heavily barred window and
a picture of B. F. Skinner on the wall.

‘731 Maverick, Governor,’ says one of the heavy thera-
pists : ‘Up to you for Deviant Behaviour, sir ! ’

‘What seems to be his trouble?’ says the Governor, with
a ritual steepling of his fingers before the sink-brush
moustache.

The third therapist points. The mop and pail suddenly
loom in close-up, and it is possible to see that the pail has
been mounted on an improvised wheeled chassis (like a
child’s go-cart), while the mop has been adapted (with a
piece of string netting and some packing wire) so that you
can squeeze it without bending down.

The young man says: ‘But, sir, this way I can do my
stint of cleaning twice as fast with half the fatigue; don’t
have to bend down to squeeze the mop, or to shift the
bucket. If we all did it this way, there would be twice as
much time for Group Therapy, and we would all get better
quicker.’

177

The Governor (frowning) : ‘You don’t seem to grasp the
fact, 731, that you’re here to learn how to do things the
way things are done. Outside, floors are cleaned by auto-
matic swabmats; inside, floors are cleaned with issue mops
and issue pails, in the issue way. Anyway, there is an in-
superable shortage of qualified group therapists. Frescrip-
tion : one hour of thump therapy, to plasticise the mind,
followed by ten days of meditation therapy in the private
room, with adjuvant ascetic diet to facilitate the thera-
peutic meditations. That will be all, gentlemen.’

Chaos, as the young man leaps forward on to the desk
top to attack the Governor. For a moment, before he is
subdued by the hulking therapists in their fibre-glass
armour, he gets his fingers into the Governor’s sink-brush
moustache, and the Governor’s eyes pop as he pulls at it.
Soon, he is laced into a safety suit and carried away. Fade
to black.

Murray Jenkins forced a cough : ‘Bit fantastic, isn’t it,
Wade? Hard to believe there was all that open, crude
violence, even in those days. Makes me doubt the rest,
boy.’

‘There really was, sir. Any student of the period will
confirm that. Before there were implants, violence had to
be done to the sensors, from outside, rather than by direct
contact with the appropriate part of the brain : you had to
use a lot of violence to produce even a small effect, and you
had to use it visibly; naturally, it looks barbarous to us.
Nowadays, of course, we can use violence after the model
of love : from inside, using a very little power to produce
even the greatest effect; it doesn’t show.’

The smell of fear in the viewing room had become
ranker ; it was all right for Wade, a creative man, to say
this sort of thing; but, all the same, to compare violence
with love was to make the sort of serious joke that’s better
not made; it wasn’t eufunctional, somebody who told that

178

kind of joke (or even laughed at that kind of joke) could
easily be rated dysfunctional, stripped of his stars, and sent
to a change tank. Of course, it was just that you were sick,
the change tanks were where you got the very best medical
treatment to change you back into a well man; but every-
body knew it was best to stay out of the change tanks if
you could.

Now the screen was showing a third title (Perpetua
bold); ‘Django Maverick : 2033.’ Accompanied by striding
bassoon music, a change tank therapist in his hulking fibre-
glass armour shoulders through the crowd in a hallucinogen
bar, up to a sinister man who is openly smoking a bootleg
carcinogen and drinking God knows what from a big, silver
pocket flask. Over faded bassoon notes, the change tank
therapist hisses :

‘I tell you, Tonio, he’s crooked creative. A wrong C. Just
what you tell me to keep an eye open for. Sure! We’re
always having to rough him up and dump him to stew in
solitary, for DB': you know, doing it different. N’l mean
diff-erent, not the old way with nice new trimmings; real
different, so it bugs you. He’s just what you tell me you
need. You want to spring him ?’

A large packet of money changes hands. Dissolve to an
office : there is a Magritte on the back wall, beside an en-
graving of Carl Friederich Gauss; a man with a Bermuda
tan and a tall forehead is sitting at an antique desk; on the
desk are a high-velocity Oerlikon 0 25 sub-machine gun, a
ten-inch slide rule, a hand-punch for falsifying IBM cards,
and other things characteristic of criminals of that decade
(as a disembodied voice-over-picture points out). The sini-
ster man from the hallucinogen bar comes in screen right,
helps himself to a large carcinogen (Jamaica) from a cedar-
wood box on the desk.

‘It’s a good lead. Capo,’ he says, puflBng luxuriously:

179

‘This contact of mine in the County change tank was a real
head-doctor before he got busted to therapist for viewing
heterodox technical tapes (s’why he needs the extra money
I slip him; used to a higher standard of living) ; if he says
this 731 Maverick is a five-star crooked C, then that’s what
Maverick is. F’l were you I’d spring him fast, bring him into
the family.’

The man behind the desk makes a gracious gesture of
assent. Fade to black.

Murray Jenkins turned to Wade: ‘Never knew that,
boy : they had this trouble back in the twenty-thirties, did
they?; bootleg creativity, creative work sold outside chan-
nels, at cut prices.’

As he hit the operative words in each shorthand descrip-
tion of unethical activity, the massed executives behind
him winced in unison. Bootleggers, channel dodgers, price-
cutters — these were the people who made things difficult
for management, by giving customers alternative sources of
supply (cheaper and faster too, because these unethicals
didn’t look after their staffs properly, didn’t load the cost of
that into their charges), by giving stockholders alternative
sources of management skills and consulting aid. A man-
ager was supposed to know about such things, of course
(the way a head-doctor was supposed to know about DB),
so that he could take proper precautions and proper reme-
dial action; but it always felt queer to be discussing such
things in public, especially when people both above you
and also below you in star rating were present; made you
feel naked.

With a ripple of high clarinet music, modulating into the
lower register (with walking bass and marching bass drum
behind) the screen showed a fourth title (in hand lettering,
dry brush on rough cartridge) : ‘Django Maverick : 2034.’
The man behind the desk in front of the Magritte offers the

180

young man from the change tank a big carcinogen, takes
one himself, and they light up.

‘Look, Maverick . . . uh ... look, Jan : your probation is
over now. You’re in. But that means you’re not a kennel
dog any longer: got to be a hunting dog, or starve. You
dream up a better way of doing something, find somebody
to bootleg it to, you cut a straight half of the profits. The
family takes the other half, for keeping you alive and on
the outside; gives us a big interest in looking after you. You
don’t dream up anything, or you dream up anything you
don’t leg; well, then, you get nothing, we get nothing, and
we don’t care what happens to you : we let the change
tanks care.’

Cut to big head of TV newscaster, screen on screen,
speaking urgently into a microphone carrying the an
monogram plate of Americas News. He is saying : ‘. . . just
heard, that Jan Maverick, age 2i years, was charged by the
Management Consultants Association police. Special Inves-
tigation Division, with skill-legging, deviant behaviour, and
price-cutting. According to the MCA police. Maverick had
been trading under cover with clients of data processing
corporations belonging to the MCA : it is skill-legging for a
non-member of the MCA to offer data processing services in
any of the advanced industrial countries; his deviant be-
haviour (DB) consisted in performing hand-tabulation and
mental calculation operations, instead of using standard
methods that can be checked by a third party carrying out
an efficiency audit; his tenders for the work undercut those
of MCA members by an average of divisor loio, threaten-
ing fair-deal employment policies maintained by MCA
members for the benefit of the staff. Judge Marcantonio
Tenebroso, after a two-minute recess (to make a telephone
call) threw the case out of court; on the grounds that the
MCA police had failed to satisfy the requirement, that cor-
porate police bringing charges of white collar crime before

i8i

a federal court must show (i) that the alleged criminal be-
haviours are not in the public interest, or (ii) that the said
criminal behaviours are subversive of advanced industrial
society. In an obiter dicta (legal joke irrelevant to the case
being tried), Judge Tenebroso suggested that cut-price skill-
legging, using new money-saving techniques, was what had
made the Americas great, and what (God willing) would
keep the Americas great. As he left the courtroom, Jan
Maverick was pelted with flowers by grateful stockholders
of the great corporations, most of them past retiring age
and living On their investments. Sources close to the MCA
say that Judge Tenebroso has a long-standing association
with the Family to which Django Maverick belongs : this
Family, of course, flnances and controls the Fitzgerald
machine in 124 states of the Americas, and Judge Tene-
broso was a Fitzgerald appointment in 2029. Americas
News.’

Fade to black, with dying fall of triumphal trumpets.

Murray Jenkins put another quarter-turn of boost on his
presidential aplomb and gave Ran Wade two seconds of his
third most chilling paternalistic smile.

‘Wade,’ he grumbled, ‘this Maverick character has made
himself real unpopular with the MCA: they don’t like
people cutting them and getting away with it. Either we’d
be hiring ourselves an incipient corpse and paying out
pension to his widow for all the years he ought to’ve been
making money for us, or else we’d be buying ourselves
years of Grade A harassment from the MCA enforcers — do
you want the MCA goosing up a stockholders’ posse and
offering to efficiency-audit us on their behalf for nothing?;
(won’t even mention what they mightn’t get along to, if
they found that smooth plays weren’t scoring for them).
This Maverick has got to have something wild, to make him
worth hiring.’

T’isn’t so much what he can do for us, sir: it’s more

182

what he could do to a publishing business like Tellus, if we
don’t hire him in and get control of his activities. You’ll see
in the next reel of tape : this is a dramatic reconstruction,
time telescoped in, from information we got through a
microbug in the office of the head of Maverick’s family
(hidden in a bigger bug they know about and turn off wtien
they talk secrets rather than stalls).’

Wade waved to the projectionist, and (with a crescendo
of snarling brass, mounting kettle-drum thumps) the screen
flared into the title (set in horror movie Black Letter)
‘Django Maverick : 2051.’ Once again, the screen shows the
office with the Magritte on the wall, the man with the Ber-
muda tan and tall brow (facing us), and the sinister accou-
trements on his desk. A scarred man of about forty comes
in screen right, sits into a straight cut to an over-shoulder
close-up of Bermuda tan, who says ;

‘Right, Maverick ; where’s this world-shaker of yours?’

In the reverse over-shoulder. Maverick’s scarred face
says : ‘It’s a thing, all right. Capo : with this thing I’ve
dreamed through, we can cut Washington and all 172 States
out of the education caper, and cut every publishing busi-
ness out as well.’

‘So show me, Jan ! ’

Maverick reaches down (off screen), comes up with a
grab bag, and pulls out a box-like object measuring about
twenty centimetres by fifteen by five thick :

‘How would you like. Capo, to be able to leg thisV Rap-
ping it with his knuckles : ‘You know the standard Tellus
T.34I individual teaching machine and T.34M master
module ? Used in every learning room in every damn one of
the 172 states of the Americas. Only one way you can buy
Tellus : in the standard package of a hundred Is plus one M
pre-programmed with the twenty HEW minimum basic
courses requirement; package costs just under one million
Ams (just enough under, to escape Amtaxlaw section

183

3.4I4-2), or around 500 Ams per course-available-per-
student (per CAPS, in the ed-trade jargon) — and I reckon
they’re not charging much more than twice what they
really have to. Now, Capo : we can sell this baby at just
one little Am for one, in single carload lots; and each one is
equivalent to one HEW course in a T.34M plus one T.34I.
Work it out for yourself : twenty of these babies will give a
student everything he gets from Tellus now, for only
twenty Ams; Tellus’ cost per CAPS, 500 Ams, our cost per
CAPS one, tiny Am. We have other advantages too, on top
of a price gulf big enough to swallow Tellus and every
other publisher in the Americas: for instance, this thing
can be dropped without breaking; it doesn’t need to be con-
nected to a master module, and it doesn’t need any power
inside or plugged in from outside, so it’s completely port-
able and can be used anywhere.’

‘Yeh, yeh. How’s it work? Pneumatics, you’ll tell
me! ’

‘Nothing like that. Listen, you know how a computer
will do when it has something very hard to tell you, like a
new mathematical formula or something ? ; puts it up on
the screen in words and numbers, and lets you read it, real
slow. Well, now : suppose you took a photograph of that,
you could carry it around with you and read it anywhere,
couldn’t you ? Next step : think how much you could carry
round with you, if you had a packet of a hundred or two or
even three hundred photographs like that.’

‘One thing wrong with that. If there’s a lot more of this
hard stuff to be shown you than the computer can put on
the screen all at once, it’ll show it you batch by batch.
You’ve seen me go over the Household accounts some-
times : I push this button here on my desk once, and each
time I do that the computer shows me the next batch of a
hundred or so transactions after the batch on the screen
when I pushed; and then it freezes it there till I’m ready to

184

go on and push this button again; you understand? Now,
the order of these things is important : I mean, each batch
of transactions has its proper place in past time, and they
got to come in turn in the same order, or they don’t mean
nothing at all. You, you’re wanting to carry around hun-
dreds of photos of these batches, or of things like them, like
a pack of cards. You’ll just get them shuffled up, and
you won’t be able to make mule nor whole horse out of
them.’

‘No! No! No such difflculty. Look!’ He opens the box,
takes out a stack of a hundred or so thin sheets of photo-
print paper; lays the stack on the desk, lifts the top sheet to
the height of his head. Bermuda tan jumps back in surprise,
as the pile of sheets rises up like a shake from a snake
charmer’s basket : the sheets have been taped together con-
certina fashion, zig-zagging, so they make a continuous
strip that can be pulled out long or folded zig-zag back into
a neat, flat stack.

‘Neat. Hey, if you could find a way of sort of hinging the
sheets together all at one edge, then you could use both
sides of each sheet, could get twice as much stuff in each
stack.’

There’s probably some snag to that. I’ll have the tech-
nical boys go into it, but don’t be too disappointed if it
turns out to be just one of those nice ideas that can’t be
made to work well enough at tHe price. The main thing is,
do we go ahead ? : this is too big a thing for my pocket
money to finance; it will have to come out of the family’s
household money.’

‘Plenty of that. Sure, why not? Just come and be sure to
get my nod each time you notch up ten million net out-
going, won’t you?’

The screen went black for a moment. Then, iris out, with
crescendo of brass, to the title (hand brushed, dry red oil on
coarse canvas) ‘Django Maverick to date : Finis.’

185

Murray Jenkins stretched, turned to Wade : The families
have a nice, old-fashioned rigour to their budgetary control.
Ran. Those low margins of theirs make for good financial
discipline, bracing atmosphere in the building. Sometimes, I
think . . . well, that’s not just the point, is it : where is this
Maverick now?’

Wade waved at the screen. The screen slid silently side-
ways, and a scarred man of about forty stepped quietly,
very quietly through the opening left behind, stood looking
at the audience of Tellus management teamers in their
emblematic wigs. "He was the scarred man they had seen in
the last screen scene in Bermuda tan’s office, with the
Magritte on the wall.

Jenkins eased another quarter turn of aplomb on, stood
up (making his team gasp in chorus), and said ; ‘Interesting
to know you so well. Maverick. Won’t shake hands; don’t
suppose you want to, much. Will you deal? ; I mean, either
big you, or you personally ?’

Maverick shook his head gently : ‘Not us. Not me.’

Jenkins shrugged; ‘Wade will give you a drink for
the road. You’ll excuse me. Have office chores. You
know.’

In his private office (secretary across the road, getting a
new reservoir fitted to an antique ink fountain pen he never
used), Jenkins punched for the straight outside line, bypass-
ing the Tellus PBX and the bunny who worked it. After a
while he got his connection and spoke :

‘Hello, Captain.... Fine, thanks. You and yours? ...
Good. Good. You think that private school is doing your
daughter any good? . . . Mmmm. Well, it must be worth it,
even if it means scraping : a HEW school couldn’t manage
her you know, not with their having no staff. So its private
or the change tank, I guess. How’s the boy? . . . IBM want
how much to take him in as a premium apprentice?
They’re still cutting it thicker than the rest of us then, but if

i86

he isn’t rated for anything else . . . What? . . . Well they’ll
let you pay by instalments, if you pay the interest for them;

the law says they got to do that Who really needs a

boat? Who really needs a car of his own? Just hardware.
Captain — the liveware must come first. . . . Yeah, I know :
you’re not like Joe Schmook: you have this high-class
neurosis, needs hardware to keep it quiet; if it’s not kept
quiet, you get these fits of public spirit, like don’t we all ?
... Of course I was only kidding! . . . Yes, of course it’ll all
be all right. . . . No, nothing this week. Well, just a trifle :
there’ll be a man called Django Maverick leaving our front
entrance as soon as we let him. You’ll know him, because
Ran Wade will show him out. Well, I have reason to be-
lieve that he isn’t paid up with his driving licence, or his
dog licence, or something : you could ask him about it. He’s
tough : if he resists arrest, and some nervy officer should
happen to shoot him, 1 wouldn’t be surprised. Would you ?
. . . Yeah, sure. Only not Wednesday : we’re duty entertain-
ing, just some boring bright people from the agency. Look
in about eight Thursday : there’ll be a few real friends in,
beer and things out of cans in the rumpus room, like
that So long. Captain.’

For a quarter of an hour, Jenkins stared silently out of
the window. Mirrored in the window of the block opposite,
he could see the front entrance of the Tellus block he was
in. At the end of that time there were some shouts outside,
and a couple of shots. He sat down, called Wade on the
internal system, told him to go home and rest up from his
night’s work.

Perhaps he should have sent Wade to see the company
quack, before sending him home. He must have been a bit
confused : twenty minutes after he left, a Tellus delivery
truck ran him over in the middle of the road, right by the
McLuhan Memorial on Feedback Drive. The Tellus driver
said he couldn’t do a damn thing to save him, he was

187

goofing. Nobody else saw the accident. Nobody in Tellus
ever talked about it much, or about anything at all that
happened that day ; that Angst really is indescribable; and
none of them wanted even a nudge of that,

THE END

A SELECTION OF FINE READING
AVAILABLE IN CORGI BOOKS

Novels

□ 552 08619

□ 552 00351

□ 552 07938

□ 552 08617

□ 552 08617

□ 552 08662

□ 552 08602

□ 552 08601

□ 552 08561

□ 552 08183

□ 552 08125

□ 552 08585

□ 552 08618

□ 552 08507

□ 552 08524

□ 552 08616

□ 552 08466
Q 552 08442

□ 552 08002

□ 552 08467

□ 552 08502

□ 552 08124

□ 552 08525

□ 552 08491

□ 552 08582

□ 552 07954

□ 552 08597

□ 552 08392

□ 552 08372

□ 552 07807

□ 552 08523

□ 552 08013

□ 552 08217

□ 552 08581

□ 552 08091

□ 552 08383

□ 552 08590

□ 552 08073

□ 552 08481

□ 552 08482

3

FAUSTO’S KEYHOLE

Jean Arnaldi 2Sp

8

TELL ME HOW LONG THE TRAIN’S

BEEN GONE

James Baldwin 35p

3

THE NAKED LUNCH

William Burroughs 37^p

7

THE TICKET THAT EXPLODED

William Burroughs 35p

7

THE BIG WIND

Beatrice Coogan 50p

6

GOD’S UTTLE ACRE

Erskine Caldwell 25p

9

EPISODE IN PALMETTO

Erskine Caldwell 20p

0

COLOUR BLIND

Catherine Cookson 30p

8

THE UNBATTED TRAP

Catherine Cookson 25p

3

BOYS AND GIRLS TOGETHER

William Goldman 37ip

6

CATCH-22

Joseph Heller 35p

5

THE PHILANDERER

Stanley Kauffmann 30p

5

SHADOW OF THE MOON

M. M. Kaye 50p

3

THE HERITAGE Frances Parkinson Keyes 30p

3

THE KITES OF WAR

Derek Lambert 25p

9

THE END OF THE RUG

Richard Llewellyn 35p

2

HERE WAS A MAN

Norah Lofts 30p

5

THE AU PAIR BOY

Andrew McCall 30p

0

MY SISTER, MY BRIDE

Edwina Mark 25p

0

ALMOST AN AFFAIR

Nan Maynard 30p

2

CARAVANS

James A. Michener 35p

9

LOLITA

Vladimir Nabokov 30p

1

THE MARIGOLD FIELD

Diane Pearson 30p

3

PHETTY MAIDS ALL IN A ROW

Francis Pollini 35p

0

RAMAGE AND THE FREEBOOTERS

Dudley Pope 3Sp

5

RUN FOR THE TREES

James Rand 3Sp

9

PORTNOY’S COMPLAINT

Philip Roth 40p

5

SOMETHING OF VALUE

Robert Ruark 40p

0

LAST EXIT TO BROOKLYN

Hubert Selby Jr 50p

7

VALLEY OF THE DOLLS

Jacqueline Susann 40p

5

THE LOVE MACHINE

Jacqueline Susann 40p

6

THE EXHIBITIONIST

Henry Sutton 37ip

1

THE CARETAKERS

Dariel Telfer 35p

2

DIONYSUS

Roderick Thorp 35p

8

TOPAZ

Leon Uris 40p

4

EXODUS

Leon Uris 40p

1

VIRGIN wrrcH

Klaus Vogel 25p

X THE PRACTICE

Stanley Winchester 40p

6

FOREVER AMBER VoL 1

Kathleen Winsor 35p

4

FOREVER AMBER Vol. 2

Kathleen Winsor 35p

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War

□ 552 086207

□ 552 08551 0

□ 552 08603 7

□ 552 08528 6

□ 552 08587 1

□ 552 98558 9

□ 552 08621 5

□ 552 08536 7

□ 552 08537 5

□ 552 08593 6

□ 552 08527 9

Romance

□ 552 08569 3

□ 552 08609 6

□ 552 08625 8

Science Fiction

□ 552 08626 6

□ 552 08516 2

□ 552 08453 0

□ 552 08401 8

□ 552 08610 X

□ 552 08533 2

General

□ 552 98434 5

□ 552 07566 3

□ 552 08403 4

□ 552 98572 4

□ 552 07593 0

□ 552 07950 2

□ 552 08402 6

□ 552 07400 4

□ 552 98121 4

□ 552 97745 4

□ 552 08362 3

□ 552 08628 2

□ 552 98247 4

THE RECOLLECTIONS OF RIFLEMAN
BOWLBY Alex Bowlby 25p

ONE MAN’S WARS Gilbert Hackforth-Jones 25p

UOUIDATE PARIS
MARCH BATTALION
SUBSMASH I

FOURTEEN EIGHTEEN (Qlustrated)
MEDICAL BLOCK; BUCHENWALD
THE SCOURGE OF THE SWASTIKA
THE KNIGHTS OF BUSHIDO
THE LONGEST DAY
THE LONG DROP

Sven Hassel 30p
Sven Hassel 30p
/. E. MacDonnell 25p
John Masters 105p
Walter Poller 35p
Lord Russell 30p
Lord Russell 3 Op
Cornelius Ryan 30p
Alan While 25p

ST. JULIAN’S DAY
DEDICATION JONES
FORTUNE’S LEAD

Bess Horton 20p
KaSe Norway 20p
Barbara Perkins 22^p

INTANGIBLES INC.

NEW WRITINGS IN SF 17
DRAGONFLIGHT
A CANTICLE FOR LEIBOWTTZ
THE GOBLIN RESERVATION
EARTH ABIDES

Brian W. Aldiss 25p
John Cornell 25p
Arme McCaffrey 25p
Walter M. Miller Jr 30p
Clifford Simak 20p
George R. Stewart 30p

GOODBYE BABY AND AMEN David Bailey and Peter Evans 125p

SEXUAL LIFE IN ENGLAND

LIFE IN THE WORLD UNSEEN

NEE DE LA VAGUE (Ulnstiatcd)

UNMARRIED LOVE

SEXUAL BEHAVIOUR

SEX AND THE MARRIED WOMAN

MY LIFE AND LOVES

Dr. Ivan Bloch 47ip
Anthony Borgia 25p
Istcien Clergue 105p
Dr. Eustace Chesser 25p
Dr. Eustace Chesser 25p
Dr. Eustace Chesser 35p
Prank Harris 65p

FIVE GIRLS (illustrated) Sam Haskins 105p

COWBOY KATE (illustrated) Sam Haskins 105p

A DOCTOR SPEAKS ON SEXUAL EXPRESSION
IN MARRIAGE (illustrated) Donald W. Hastings, M.D. 50p
A WORLD OF MY OWN Robin Knox~Johnston 37ip

THE HISTORY OF THE NUDE IN PHOTOGRAPHY
(illustrated) Peter Lacey and Anthony La Rolonda 135p

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General {contd.)

a 352 9ti345 4 THE ARTIST AND THE NUDE (Ulustrated) lOSp

□ 552 08069 1 THE OTHER VICTORIANS Steven Marcus 50p

□ 552 08010 1 THE NAKED APE Desmond Morris 30p

Q 552 08613 4 GUITAR Dan Morgan 30p

Q 552 08611 8 FEEDING THE FLAME T. Lobsang Rampa 30p

□ 552 98178 8 THE YELLOW STAR (illustrated) Gerhard Schoenberner 105p

□ 552 08629 0 BRUCE TEGNER*S COMPLETE BOOK OF AIKIDO

AND HOLDS AND LOCKS (illustrated) Bruce Tegner 40p

□ 552 086304 BRUCE TEGNER’S COMPLETE BOOK OF

KARATE (illustrated) Bruce Tegner 40p

□ 582 93479 5 MADEMOISELLE 1 + 1 (illustrated)

Marcel Veronese and Jean~Claude Peretz 105p

Western

□ 552 08532 4 BLOOD BROTHER

□ 552 08567 7 SUDDEN— DEAD OR ALIVE

□ 552 08589 8 UNDER THE STARS AND BARS

□ 552 08624 X A HORSE CALLED MOGOLLON

□ 552 07840 9 THE REBEL SPY

□ 552 07842 5 ARIZONA RANGER

□ 552 07992 8 THE DEVIL GUN

□ 552 08475 1 NO SURVIVORS

□ 552 07561 2 KILRONE *

□ 552 08007 1 CHANCY

□ 552 08158 2 THE BROKEN GUN

Elliott Arnold 40p
Frederick H. Christian 20p
No. 63 /. T. Edson 20p

J. T. Edson 25p
J. T. Edson 22ip
T, Edson 22ip
/. T. Edson 22^p
Will Henry 25p
Louis V Amour 20p
Louis L’ Amour 20p
Louis L* Amour 20p

Crime

□ 552 08605 3 BELOW SUSPICION

□ 552 08606 1 VERSUS THE BARON

□ 552 08588 X A COMPLETE STATE OF DEATH

□ 552 08622 3 THE DOUBTFUL DISCIPLE

□ 552 08472 7 THE INNOCENT BYSTANDERS

□ 552 08520 0 KISS ME, DEADLY

□ 552 08425 5 THE SHADOW GAME

John Dickson Carr 25p
John Creasey 20p
John Gardner 25p
William Haggard 2()p
James Munro 25p
Mickey Spillane 20p
Michael Underwood 20p

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(FEB. ’71)

featuring stories by Lee Harding, Robert Wells, Donald
Malcolm, James White, William Spencer, David Kyle and
Grahame Leman.

NEW WRITINGS IN SF

brings to lovers of science fiction strange, exciting stories
— stories written especially for the series by international

authors.

NEW WRITINGS IN SF

is now one of the most popular and well-established
series in science fiction and presents a stimulating and
energetic approach to modern SF.

U.K 25p. (5s.)

AUSTRALIA 80c

NEW ZEALAND 80c
SOUTH AFRICA 60c
CANADA 95c